Recipe of the Week: Where Are They??

I have a job now, so does that mean I don't have time to do a recipe of the week?

Psh! No. I have a part time job now. I had three jobs at school. And classes. And friends. And I still found time to make up new food combinations.

I mean, you've always got to have time for food, right?

Bacon Bit Chocolate Chip Cookies

But here's the catch...I am not posting my recipes on this blog.

Recipe of the Week: Cinnamon Honey Bread

I found this recipe under a file labeled: My Recipe Ideas.

It is a list that follows as such:

-Meatballs in blueberry sauce
-Spaghetti stuffed meatballs
-Chocolate chip cookie apple pie
-Snickerdoodle pie
-Peach muffins
-Biscoff and honey pancakes

and then the a very sketchy looking recipe for Cinnamon Honey Bread. I have no idea where this recipe came from. Let me tell you, I was scared.

Recipe of the Week

It's time for more pancakes!

Chocolate Chip Cookie Pancakes

You could eat them for breakfast, or have them for dessert. Or maybe second breakfast. Or just an afternoon snack.

Basically, it's a big, fluffy chocolate chip cookie.

Recipe of the Week

Say this five times fast: Peanut Butter Banana Chocolate Chip Pudding Cookies!

Here's the thing. I can't stand bananas. I've tried. I think they're really fun to eat, but they just make me gag.

Aaand...I'm allergic to peanut butter.

But seriously, peanut butter and banana is a classic combination! And peanut butter and chocolate is delicious, bananas and chocolate have always been a thing, and pudding cookies are deliciously moist cute little round cookies, so what could go wrong?

Recipe of the Week

You know how I had two recipes all ready to go? Yeah, this isn't one of them. I've still got those two to add, and whatever else I make up before then. But with the theme of quesadillas and using up leftovers, here's something you can do with your leftover tortillas!

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

I'm so excited for all the new recipes I'm trying! I've made a bunch of things this week while my parents were out of the house and couldn't judge me; some of them were even healthy! But the more important ones that must be shared are not exactly healthy...but they ARE delicious! And which is more important? Don't answer that. Just look at this picture and drool.

Recipe of the Week

When you live at home with your parents and don't have to go to work, you have lots of time to make new recipes! So although they will not be "college dining hall" recipes, I can still make lots of food, take pictures of it, and feel like I'm doing it for a purpose.

And there is always a purpose for pancakes at midnight. Especially these.

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

Back to school...and currently working on my senior show before it's submitted for review next Friday, along with all the rest of college life. And snow. And rain. And sleet, hail and the power going off every five minutes. But hey, that was just one day. Regardless of the weather, I am not spending much time in Baldwin, aside from work.

Fortunately, like a good college student, I am prepared. I have a delicious recipe I tried over spring break that I have been dying to share!!! I brought these back as a surprise for The Sojourn staff, and they seemed to enjoy them, so I think it was a successful experiment.

Oreo Pudding Cookies-pretty easy and pretty yummy.

I used a pudding cookie recipe from another blog: http://www.twopeasandtheirpod.com/vanilla-pudding-chocolate-chip-cookies/
1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
3.4 oz. package vanilla instant pudding mix
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

But instead of vanilla pudding, I used Oreo pudding!

And crushed up mini Oreros!

And chocolate chips!

Here are the directions from their blog. Pretty easy to follow. And don't worry about them looking gooey when they come out of the oven; they will firm up. You don't want to burn them, after all!

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or silicone baking mat and set aside.
2. Using a mixer, beat together butter and sugars until creamy. Add in pudding mix, eggs, and vanilla extract. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix until just combined. Stir in the chocolate chips.
3. Drop cookie dough by rounded tablespoons onto prepared baking sheet.  Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until slight golden and set. Remove cookies from oven and let cool on baking sheet for two minutes. Transfer to a cooling rack and cool completely.

Recipe of the Week

4

There's no college dining hall recipe this week, because I am home on spring break! Woohoo! So, in honor of being home, I have a brand new pancake recipe, completely from my own mind! Scary. But delicious. Here it is:

Chocolate Cheesecake Pancakes.

Yum!

I had a package of cream cheese I was going to bake biscuits with, but I decided I wanted to try it in pancakes instead. I only used half of the package for this, so there is enough left to try something else. But here is the pancake recipe. It is just the basic recipe from the Betty Crocker Cookbook (at least as it was 30 years ago when my mama got married and got her cookbook).
1 egg
1 cup flour
3/4 cup milk
1 tbs sugar
2 tbs oil
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

Mix it all up, and then add my ingredients.

4 oz cream cheese
1 package hot chocolate mix
A few crumbled chocolate chip cookies

Yes this is how college students make up recipes, because we do not own all of the proper ingredients like cocoa, chocolate chips and graham crackers. Hot chocolate mix works very well to add the chocolate flavor to my pancakes. But graham crackers are usually added to cheesecake type things to give the aura of a crust, and I thought those would be a nice touch. I am too impatient to wait until we get graham crackers though, but I had a brilliant idea to replace them. Why not cookie crumbs? And since we didn't have any chocolate chips (which are almost absolutely necessary for sugary pancakes) crumbling up chocolate chip cookies also added a few of those! Like I said, brilliant!

The cream cheese should probably have been sitting out a while to get softer so it was easy to mix in, but I think it worked out well having chunks of it in the mix. That way, it doesn't all melt into the batter, but when you bite into your pancakes, surprise! There's cheesecake inside! I was quite pleased with the results, and I hope you will be too. The only problem was they got a little cold while I was too busy taking pictures!

Recipe of the Week

It's almost spring break at Indiana Wesleyan. Almost. Thus, life is crazy, busy and complicated. But in the midst of this crazy, not very spring-like time, I made one last recipe of the week before heading home. I've spent a lot of time at breakfast this week, studying and getting work done in the (somewhat) quiet that is a college dining hall before 10 in the morning. But since the self-cook station is always equipped with bread and eggs, this is a recipe you can make whenever you are in the mood for something sweet.

Cinnamon Raisin French Toast!

I put the whole eggs in the picture for dramatic effect, but I just mixed the liquid eggs with some of the 2% milk and soaked the cinnamon raisin bread in it. I've actually made french toast with bagels and english muffins before, so if you're feeling adventurous (or bored) feel free to try whatever you can find on the bread bar. Blueberry bagel french toast...now that sounds fabulous!

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

It is Thanksgiving, which means of course that I am not at school to do the recipe of the week. But does that stop me? No!

Well ok, I didn't make up this recipe on my own, but I did make it today and take pictures of it (and eat it) so I thought I'd share it.

 Gingerbread pancakes!!!

So here's the recipe, which I got from a magazine a few years ago:
2 cups baking mix
1 1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1 egg
1 1/2 cups milk
1/4 cup molasses

Mix the baking mix (or you can just put in your own flour/salt baking powder, etc.) with the ginger, cinnamon and cloves in a medium sized bowl. Beat the egg, milk and molasses in a separate bowl. Then of course, you just put the two of them together, because pancakes are so fun and easy to make! However, these do seem really runny at first, but the batter does get thicker upon standing a little bit. Still, I would leave out a little bit of the milk and maybe mix in a little extra flour. I like my pancakes nice and thick, especially these, because they taste like gingerbread cookies.

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.

Recipe of the Week

What if soy milk...is just regular milk...introducing itself in Spanish???

I just love puns and cheesy jokes. I found this list the other day, and it's just so brilliant I thought I ought to share it:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/puns-that-are-too-clever-for-their-own-good

But if you happen to come back to this page after being distracted by those clever puns, I'd like to share an idea from my bestest bestest friend, who is studying abroad in Thailand this semester. I got to skype her the other day, and she thought she would share some ideas for my recipe of the week. With all that amazing Thai food she is discovering over there, she must have some pretty exotic ideas, right? Well, here it is: warm soy milk.

Yep, that's it. Warm soy milk, with spices mixed in like cinnamon or vanilla. Of course in Baldwin, the soy milk is already flavored vanilla (and chocolate too!) but if they put out the cinnamon, you can certainly mix some in and heat it up in the microwave. Today was not one of those days when they put out cinnamon, however, so I tried to mix in some brown sugar. It just sank to the bottom. But I will say (today being doughnut day) that dunking a doughnut in warm soy milk and then in brown sugar is quite delicious!

Thanks Alyssa for sharing your idea!

Recipe of the Week

It pays to have friends.

This is a lesson I can certainly learn from. I like to keep all my ideas to myself until I've tried them. Then, if it didn't work, no one will ever have to know. But if it did, I can show everybody and they'll say, "Oh my! That is brilliant!" But sometimes life just works a lot better when you ask for help.

Exhibit A: recipe of the week ideas. I am just not brilliant enough to come up with all the ideas on my own, but hey, there is a whole school full of people out there who are eating several times a day in Baldwin. That's a lot of experience to glean from.

Since I have friends who work in Baldwin, they see a lot. It's like having eyes on the inside. I've got a man on the inside! Or in this case, a woman. My friend Charlee (who is a woman) was presented with a strange request when she was making omelets the other day: someone asked her to mix cottage cheese in with the omelet. Whhaat? Cottage cheese in the omelet, huh? Well hey, it doesn't hurt to try. Even if you are skeptical of cottage cheese, as I am.

So here's what you do: pick out your toppings. Anything you want. I chose ham, broccoli, and tomatoes. Because I was being healthy. Somewhat. So cook them in the frying pan, just as you would when preparing your normal, everyday omelet. And THEN you add the cottage cheese. Because this is not a normal, everyday omelet. It just melts into the mix like it was supposed to be there in the first place.

Once all your toppings are good and covered in melted cottage cheese, add your eggs. Mine started out looking like an omelet, but the cheese does make it harder to hold that shape, so it ended up as scrambled eggs. No shame in that. It's pretty simple, just cook it all up together. And if you're feeling adventurous, throw in some rosemary or whatever spices happen to be around. I am not well versed in my spices, so whatever you believe will augment the taste of this concoction, I'll trust your opinion. You'll be the one eating it, after all, so mix in whatever you like. Just make sure you mix in some cottage cheese too because, hey, I just made eggs that literally had cheese cooked into them! I honestly can't say that there was a strong taste to them, but there certainly wasn't a bad taste. Next time I shall try to add more cheese because everyone knows that more melted cheese makes everything better.

Looks yummy, doesn't it? Not bad Charlee, not bad.