recipes for change

I have recently become unattached, i.e. single. It’s for the best, and I feel pretty good about it as a whole, but there were still a few difficult days.

Behold, my patened coping process

Okay this part is important: first wallow for a few days. watch lots of movies.

THEN one morning you will wake up and feel less bad. At that point decide to do some metaphorical ball-grabbing, so sit up and:

• Go on a cleaning spree. Do all that laundry, wash the dishes, mop the floors!
• Meet up with your girlfriends! MOST IMPORTANT and you know, branch out too. meet new people.
• Make upbeat playlist while riding the metro (and/or cry a little)
• Go shopping – by ridiculous, fun things
• Then, make brownies.

When I first started baking (I mean, seriously baking, not just making weird mint cupcakes when I was ten) the first thing I made was Betty Crocker’s Chocolate chip cookies. Then I flipped a little further in the book to her brownies.

The first ones I made were utterly terrible. They didn’t even have chocolate in them, just cocoa powder. However Betty included a second recipe a few pages later, and it is this recipe that I regularly turn to. None of the other recipes I try have come close to this one, but fair warning – it’s not for the faint of heart (or waist). But you know – sometimes you just need to suck it up and eat some brownies.

Unfortunately, I am not able to bake these from scratch… and normally I’m not a big fan of box mixes but as far as they go, Betty Crocker’s Deluxe brownies are pretty dang tasty.

I was going to give you my recipe for Much Better Brownies but I realized that like a fool, I left my recipe notebook at home. But I’ll post it another time. I know the method, but I’m a little shakey on the quantities and I don’t want to give anyone a faulty recipe.

post-script: just because you feel okay for a day doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be on your guard for sad feelings. They can still sneak up on you!

Yeah they did.

consolation broccoli

I’m sorry, I know you hate broccoli. I hated it too once.

but it’s been a long-ass week and its all that I had in the fridge.

and sometimes you just have to eat your broccoli.

meh

It didn’t turn out all that well. half of it was undercooked and I realized that I never bought salt after moving here (I mean, I put feta and olives in almost everything so I usually have my bases covered)

but with about five minutes in boiling water and lots of lemon juice and olive oil… you end up with something not that bad

blerk!

don’t worry, it will get better soon. And then I’ll cook you alll the broccoli your heart desires (that is, none and I’ll make those coconut fudge things instead)

BACK FROM THE DEAD

finals are always killer, but especially this time around. They also are pretty bad for your healthy food intake. I always spend way more on take out during finals than any other time of the year.

In any case, I’ve finally settled in to my summer internship and I am semi-ready to get back on the culinary horse (so to speak).

sort of.

The Laziest Pasta

• pasta of your choice
• 1/2 onion
• 1tbs yogurt (i like greek!)
• drizzle of olive oil
• lemon juice
• extras: feta, pimento roja, whatever

this can be made with tons of variations, but basically it goes like this –

boil the pasta per the directions on the box. cook the onions over a low heat until they are soft and tasty. while the pasta is hot, put everything into a bowl. Mix it up

Yum!

Okay so this isn’t haute cuisine, but it’s easy and it only takes 20 minutes or so.

And there are tons of variations:

add butter instead of olive oil. use garlic instead of onions. add lots of vegetables. skip the yogurt, throw in whatever you have in the fridge

guys this dish is turned out non-photogenic so here is a picture of my cat.

I have a backlog of posts that I’ll try to get to in the next week or so – if anyone is even reading