pin 11: barley chocolate chip cookies

The Pin: Barley Chocolate Chip Cookies
The Verdict: Yum, yum, yummy. These definitely have an oaty taste, but I approve.
Nutritional Label

My barley obsession continues. I recently made a pot of stew and threw in some quick cooking barley for good measure, and it may have been the best part of the stew. Well, okay, maybe not, but it was darned good addition. Okay, on to the cookies!

I want to be clear, just because these cookies are made with barley four instead of white flour, they are still cookies. So while they might be healthier than regular cookies, they are still in no way actually healthy. A lot of sugar and butter went into the making of these cookies. But, white flour did not! I made a nutritional label (linked above) for those curious about that sort of thing.

The dough smelled and tasted good  a( little grainy as opposed to smooth), and it was not as creamy looking as regular cookie dough - defiantly denser. In fact, when I put the dough on the cookie sheet I just used my hands, there was little stickiness.  They cooked up great, smelling wonderfully as they were baking, but did spread out a little more than I'm used to with my cookies.

I am often critical of chocolate chip cookies. So, I was wondering if these would meet my standards.  Luckily they did.

While they have a slightly different taste from normal chocolate chip cookies, it's a pleasant taste - almost like oatmeal cookies, but not quite that strong.  I would still make my normal cookies for parties or functions, but if I just have a hankering for some home-made cookies, I would make these again in a heartbeat.

**If you make this with margarine, it will cut the fat by 1/3. I usually use butter, but I know some people aren't picky and may like that information. **

pin 10: homemade pasta sauce

The Pin: Great Grandma's Pasta Sauce

The Verdict: Easy-peasy, basilriffic, yummy, but not the end-all-be-all sauce

Okay, I don't normally call out people's grammar or punctuation as I know my blog is filled with errors (my journalist friend Greg has said I could benefit from a copy-editor) as I often write in a hurry. BUT, this blogger hit one of my pet peeves with her misuse of the word infamous.  She wrote, "Jason’s grandmother makes her infamous pasta dish."  as everyone seems to like this pasta dish (she is recommending others make it), I believe she meant "...her famous pasta dish."  You see, infamous means something that is famously BAD. Okay, I'm done now.

On to the review:
Making this sauce is a snap. While you do have let it simmer for 2 hours, if you make it on a lazy day (snow day, Sunday, whatever), it seems well worth it. Then again, I'm a basil and garlic whore, and there is A LOT of basil and garlic in this recipe.  My house smells amazing!

Half way through the simmering process, I decided it needed a bit more zip, so added more oregano, pepper, and salt.

I made a batch of it, and will freeze it in single/double servings packs, so when I want some spaghetti I can just grab a pack and be done.

This sauce is tasty, and I will enjoy it more than Ragu. It is so easy, I will for sure make it again, using the recipe as a base and add whatever herbs I fancy. I recommend it for novice sauce-from-scratch cooks. :)

pin 9: whole wheat pizza dough

Pizza time! I have a pizza dough recipe I like (this honey wheat pizza crust),that I posted on my "Against the Grain" a few years ago, but I saw this recipe on Pinterest, and I thought it was worth a shot as I'm always looking for ways to make my favorite Friday meal healthier.

The Pin: 100% Whole Wheat Pizza Dough
The Verdict: Mixed:  Easy to make, insane amount of prep-time, super yummy crust.

Apparently I should read recipes more carefully because I planned to have this Friday, until I read that the dough should sit in the fridge for 24-72 hours. Yikes! That's crazy; this better be the best pizza dough ever. I made the dough Friday morning (late) and made the pizza for lunch on Saturday, so it sat in the fridge for the minimum time suggested.

Slight tweaks I made to the recipe: 

• I substituted honey for the white sugar
• After you take the dough out of the fridge, it should rise for an hour on the counter. My kitchen is usually cold, so I stuck it in a warm oven for 45 minutes.
• Sadly, I don't have a pizza stone, so I pre-baked the crust for 5 minutes before putting on the toppings. 
• Because I was just making 1 pizza (I halved the recipe), I didn't bother with the parchment paper, and instead just made the pizza on my pizza pan, but in hindsight, it would have been useful for faster clean up.

Crispiness:

On her blog, the author indicated that this pizza doesn't get "crispy," but I found mine got to a good crispness level.  Crispiness was an issue with my other recipe, but I had no such problems with this -- perhaps because I pre-baked the crust and/or didn't use the parchment paper? 

My sauce and toppings:
For my sauce I used the crushed tomato recipe (on the same blog post as the honey wheat crust) because it is still the best tasting sauce I've ever made. YUM. so easy. You should do it.

My go-to homemade pizza toppings are cheese, left over hamburger, and bell peppers, but this time I opted for basil leaves, turkey pepperoni & some left over bell peppers. I used mozzarella cheese (but I usually just use whatever I happen to have): I'm not a big cheese person, so her recipe called for way to much in my book. I probably used 1/2 a cup or so.

How does it compare to my Honey Wheat Crust?

• On the one hand, it has a lighter flavor (I taste more pizza than crust) and it was easier to get a crisper crust.
• On the other hand, I had to prepare the dough days in advance. LITERALLY (I'm really hung up on this).
• I think the 100% whole wheat is a better dough than the honey wheat, but not significantly better to win out over practicality. That said, if I plan ahead and just think to make the dough during a Scandal commercial break, I could make this a normal part of my menu. 

pin 8: chicken soup with lentils and barley

The heart healthy recipes continue! Fortunately, my parents gave me a small deep freezer and a super food saver for Christmas, so I will be eating well even when I'm busy. :)  Okay, down to business:

The Pin: Chicken Soup with Lentils and Barely*
The Verdict: Delicious! This is definitely going to be a staple in my meal rotation.

Just like the lentil and kielbasa soup, this is relatively easy to make, but it would definitely be too much to deal with on a weeknight. This is a perfect Sunday (or freezer) meal.

Changes to the recipe:

• I substituted leftover turkey from Thanksgiving for the chicken.  Having to cook meat beforehand for this soup would make the prep time on this a little much, so I highly recommend making it with leftover meat.
• I think it could have used more garlic and basil, salt & pepper. I used fresh (for both the basil and garlic), but could barely taste them. I also use low sodium everything, so found I did need to salt it. I pepper everything, so it's no surprise I needed to pepper it!

*Please note, one of the pins for this recipe (the one I pinned) only lead me to an ingredient list. From there, I had to Google the recipe to get the full thing. I linked to the actual recipe above. 

pin 7: lentil soup

Some of my readers know of my heart disease phobia,* and with that phobia in mind, I've decided to take control of my heart health in 2014. This means learning to cook with barely and lentils (among other things). As you can imagine, I've been pinning recipes on Pinterest like crazy, and this is the tale of one such pin.

The Pin: Lentil and Turkey Kielbasa Soup

The verdict: Pretty damn good!

I followed her recipe exactly, although I just bought the brand of turkey sausage that was on sale & I didn't accompany the soup with bread.  I have to say, this is a good winter soup. It is hearty (heh, pun intended), and the kielbasa makes this dish delish. It was also fairly easy to make: the prep time was minimal. 

A word about Lentils: I don't think I've ever eaten lentils before, and their flavor is strong, but not unpleasant. It is one that I think may take some getting used to, but overall, I like this dish, and will eat all 10 servings of it over the course of the winter. 

Things I might do differently:  Because the spice of the kielbasa is my favorite thing about the soup, I may play around with adding other spices/herbs - not much, just something to take it up a notch. I may also throw it in the crockpot, so the flavors can mingle a bit more.  I will also quarter or halve my sausage circles so I can have more bites that include the meat. My roommate, who likes things to have a carnival of flavor will likely say this is too bland for him.

For vegetarians: the recipe says you can omit the sausage and use all vegetable broth (rather than 1/2 veggie, 1/2 chicken), but I think you will really need to spice it up if you make this. There just isn't that much flavor outside of the sausage.

One last tip: After dinner mint recommended.

*My phobia began upon learning that women's heart attacks often present themselves differently from men's, and women sometimes have heart-attacks without knowing it, which can lead to their body being wrecked, or them being dead.  I spend about 30% of the time wondering if I'm having a heart-attack.  This PSA with Elizabeth Banks is both hilarious and terrifying; enjoy! (plays automatically)

pin, revisisted

This fall, I followed the pin to spray paint my door handles, and I loved it, but after a few months, I have to admit that the paint is coming off of my door handle on my front door (my original review)

I still think this was a valuable pin, and can give a short-term fix, but if you can spend the money on new hardware, that may be the way to go.  Still, I think if you are trying to update hardware that is not often touched (a light fixture, for example), then I would still use the spray paint.

Pin 6: making ornaments from cd's

Disclaimer, I didn't actually make this pin, but a friend of mine did on a craft night I recently hosted, so I'm including it.

Pin: DIY: Mosaic Ornaments 
Pin rating: TERRIBLE

It is very difficult to cut the cd's, and the chance of cutting one's self accidentally is high. The end result pictured on the website, even for talented artists, is difficult to achieve, and the reward (even when it does look great) is not worth the time or risk of injury.

It may work better if you have heavy-duty scissors and can cut very small pieces, but overall I would NOT recommend this pin. :(

pin 5: bird seed ornaments

Pin 5:  Holiday Birdseed Feeders
Pin Rating: Excellent!

This pin was super fun, easy, inexpensive, and kid-friendly. I loved it!  Sticking with the holiday theme, I used Christmas cookie-cutters, but you could do this any time with any shaped cookie cutters. So fun!

pin 4: draft dogers

Pin 4: Sock it to Your Energy Bill

Pin rating: Excellent! Easy & Economic. Best for homes without dogs.

My front door currently lets in a lot of cold air. A LOT of cold air, so I decided to try to make some draft dodgers. This tutorial on Pinterest seemed easy enough, so I gave it a try.  

Materials:

Fuzzy Socks - Because I would have these draft-dodgers up longer than the Christmas season, I tried to find some fuzzy socks that were not red and green, and I found two pars of blue and green extra long fuzzy socks for 2.47 at Target or Walmart.   One pair of these socks is long enough for a normal door width, so if you can find them, they would be more economical and require less sewing than having to buy 2 pairs of normal length fuzzy socks.

Popcorn kernels - This project took MUCH more popcorn than I anticipated. I used more than a 45oz jar for one dodger.

Stuffing - you can get this at any craft store, and this will be the most expensive item. Hobby Lobby and Michael's almost always have 40-50% off coupons on their website, so I would use those to keep this pin ultra cheap.  You can buy a small bag; you really don't need very much of this at all.

Needle & Thread - any scrap thread you have around the house should get it done. Anyone can do this - you just making a few stitches to close up the socks.

So, I followed the direction exactly, and sewed up my socks. Perfect! I love my little draft-dodger sock snakes & made two.  Unfortunately, so did my dog,but I probably should have seen that coming...

week 3, pin 3

Week of September 23rd:
 Blue "Crystal Meth" Rock Candy (Breaking Bad)
Pin Rating: Excellent for novelty
Cost: $20 (if you have to buy a  $10 candy thermometer, which I did)

Tonight is the series finale of Breaking Bad, so Panda and I decided to give BrBa a proper send-off by trying to make some "Blue Meth" of our own (out of granulated sugar and corn syrup, of course!) for our series finale party.

Our first cook didn't turn out as we hoped.  The recipe instructs you to remove the sugar mixture from heat when the thermometer reaches 285 degrees, but we did not quite do this in time, and within seconds we had over-cooked our candy. 

Even just slightly over-cooking it produced yellowed (or carmalized) candy, so when we added the blue food coloring, our candy turned green. Knowing Lydia would not be pleased, we decided we'd better try again.

For our 2nd cook, we removed the mixture from the heat a few degrees before the recipe called for us to in the hopes we wouldn't have the same green problem.

When we added the food coloring it looked a little green at first, so we added several more ( 5-7) drops of Betty Crocker's blue gel coloring.  We then worried it was going to be too dark, but thankfully it turned the perfect shade of blue!

After pouring the sugar mixture out on the lightly greased cookie sheet, we let it harden and cool for about an hour, it was easy to break apart. We put the broken pieces in a ziplock bag and pounded the candy with  a meat tenderizer until getting the right look.

Over all, I am SUPER PLEASED with this pin!   It was fun, easy, and a great way to send off Walt and Jesse.

Week 2, Pin 2

Week of September 15: Painting door hardware/fixtures
Pin Rating: Excellent!
Cost: $25

After painting my door a beautiful blue, the ugliness of my door handle and mail slot became too obvious to ignore anymore.

Exhibit A

My first plan was to buy new hardware. Then I saw how much a mail slot, door handle, and deadbolt cost, and I decided that my teacher's salary would not adequately cover that and my student loans, so to Pinterest I went. For Pinterest has the answers to all life's problems.

I read a few pins on the subject, and finally decided on the one that takes you to Sherry Petersik's blog, Young House Love.  She had recently spray painted (yes, spray painted!) her hardware, and it worked for her. Her directions were simple and clearly explained.  When she described the motion she used to spray the paint as the motion one would use when spraying their hair with Aqua Net, I knew we spoke the same language.

This weekend, I set out to test her pin, and I am very please with the results. I followed her directions exactly, buying the exact sanding paper, deglosser, and spray paint she suggested, and there were zero snags. So far, I love the look, and hopefully she is correct that the sanding and deglosser will help keep the color.

Here is the finished product, and I am super pleased!  I'm surveying my house for other hardware I can spray paint...

  Exhibit B

Week 1, Pin 1

Week of Sept 8th: Painting  my door.

My door has been an ugly red color for years. Like 30 years. I'm sure it was a beautiful red color 35 years ago, but time has not been kind, and I don't really like the color red.  Inspired by this pin, I finally decided to repaint, and 3 coats later, am happy with the results. My door is now a beautiful blue color!

Pin review: "Meh" I don't actually think this pin told me anything I didn't already know about the painting a door successfully, but I'm glad it was on Pinterest because it's presence served as a nagging reminder that I should just paint the damn door already.  For those clueless about painting, it would be helpful.

Side note: if you get paint on surfaces you did not mean to paint, Goof Off works really well.  Even on concrete... (wa-waaa...). What's life with out a painting mishap or two?

52 Pins Project

I have  Pinterest problem.

 It's so easy to click "pin" on a project idea, recipe, or outfit, but I'm finding it more difficult to actually, you know, make the project, recipe, or outfit.  So, in an attempt to declutter my Pinterest boards, I've decided to complete a 52 Pin Project.  The rules: 52 weeks, 52 pins. Pretty simple. I'll post my projects here!

Away we go!

pinterest adventures: greek yogurt pancakes

This morning I made Greek Yogurt Pancakes. I like my fruit on the side, so I made these sans blueberry, and I also changed the flour from white to wheat. Note: the recipe says to use 1/4 of the batter to make the pancake, I think this is too much. I think you could easily get 6-8 pancakes out of the recipe, not 4.



Overall Flavor Rating: A - Oh my god, these were delicious! They tasted almost exactly like regular home-made pancakes.
Time/Prep-Rating - A+ - Super easy. It took about 3-5 minutes to mix everything, then just normal pancake cook time.
Things to change for next time: nothing! YUM!

adventures in pinterest recipes

The adventure continues! For dinner I made crockpot teriyaki chicken and spicy, garlicky, green beans, served over quinoa.

Overall Flavor Rating: A -- Delicious! 

Time/Prep Rating:  A+  --Super easy. I threw the teriyaki in the crockpot to slow cook while I watched some T.V. and went for a run. When I got back, I made my green beans while the quinoa was cooking, and viola! Dinner. 

Things to change next time: use pre-minced garlic to save time. I would also throw the mushrooms in the crock instead of cooking w/ the green beans, and throw in some peppers as well to get this up to an A+ rating for flavor.

Crockpot teriyaki:

1 lb of chicken

1 cup chicken broth
1/2 cup soy/teriyaki sauce
1/3 cup brown sugar
3 minced garlic cloves

I modified the recipe because I made my own teriyaki sauce, and as such felt no need to add more sugar and garlic (my home-made had plenty). So, I threw the chicken, 1/2 cup chicken broth, and 1 cup home-made teriyaki in the crock pot on low. It smelled divine.

A word about teriyaki sauce. I have found every store-bought bottle I've ever made to be complete and utter crap, so a friend of mine gave me her family's recipe. I don't give out family recipes, but I've perused on-line and have found several that are comparable (example). It took no time at all - or it would have taken no time if I'd bought minced garlic instead of mincing my own. If you have an extra 45 seconds when making dinner, I HIGHLY recommend making your own sauce instead of buying it.

Spicy, Garlicky, Green Beans:

I love green beans. In fact, I love them raw, but they can get boring. This recipe gave me the added pizzazz I've needed. I followed the cooking directions but added some mushrooms that needed to get eaten, and I could not be happier with the results. The beans were crisp and flavorful (it was spicy!), and complimented my main dish fabulously.

after months of hoarding recipes on pinterest, i'm actually trying one out

Today I tried out The Burlap Bag's oat banana cookies as seen on Pinterest.

Ingredients:

2 bananas

1 cup quick oats.

Optional: ch. chips, nuts, etc...

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350. Mix ingredients (mashing up banana), put on cookie sheet in cookie form, and bake for 15 minutes.

I had one banana and rolled oats (which are the same as quick oats, only not crushed up), so I made a half order. In the comments several people said to add vanilla. Yes, of course that will make these better, but  I added the chocolate chips (yes, I had to), I opted not to add more calories and sugar that (hopefully) isn't necessary. 

Oh my god, these are baking right now, and the smell so freaking good!

They are out of the oven, and cooled & tasted!  I would give this a solid C+ rating, but think it could be an A with alterations.

Overall, this is a super easy and quick way to use up those bananas (I always seem to have one I can't get to in time) that is less of a production than baking bread & doesn't use flour. The flavor was appealing, but the consistency was a bit of a turn-off. Because I used rolled oats, I think the banana mush had too little to mix with & as a result these are a big ball of mush and oats. If I chopped the oats, I don't think I would have this problem. Additionally, the chocolate chips did nothing for me. Next time, I would skip those and just add a pinch of cinnamon (maybe a dash of vanilla).  If you like walnuts (I don't), they would compliment this well. 

Next Up: Greek yogurt pancakes & crock-pot chicken teriyaki