a few cookies too many...

...or not. I had intended to make 6 dozen of the chocolate chip cookies from the Bride & Groom cookbook my sister had given us. I ended up with 7.5 dozens to share. Yes, to share. I swear. 

See? For sharing. Ready to give away in ziploc bags and containers. 

This recipe by twins Mary and Sara Corpening is easy to make (a sample from the book featuring this recipe is posted here) - and yields really moist, chewy and yummy cookies. 

Thanks to my sister for the gift. You are aiding our weight gain. :)

This is lightyears away from my first attempt at making these chocolate chip cookies a week ago. I had not put enough space in between the cookie balls (when it says leave 2 inches apart, you leave 2 INCHES apart!!) AND placed the cookie sheet at the lowest rack which burned the bottoms a little. BUT they still tasted really good and the texture was just what I've always liked in a cookie, so I said I'd give it another shot. 

When this is what your first peek in the oven looks like, you know you have some damage control to do.

A surgery was needed to separate these.

You live, you learn - dedicated to all you Alanis fans out there. 


This time, it came out like these:

Like a mosh pit in a rock concert. No pushing people!

First dibs. I love you cookies. Too many of you makes my tummy hurt but you're worth it.

It doesn't require you to refrigerate the batter before baking too - which addresses the issues people have with waiting for the batter. I know who you are. I know what you do. You take it out before the recommended fridge time is up. I ain't tellin' though. BUT if you want less flat cookies and to make scooping them into the cookie sheets easier, you can refrigerate the batter for 10 minutes or so. 


Another slight but yummy modification: after seeing how much batter I had (before adding the pecans), I decided to save a third of the batter to make into peanut butter cookies. Add 2 HEAPING tablespoons of chunky peanut butter (Mr. G's choice. I like the smooooth kind.), and you are IN the game. This is gooooood. I imagine you can also add the same amount of Nutella and the cookies will be awesome. 

A small panic attack started when I was running out of cooling rack space. 

All mine. Then I felt guilty and shared it with the guys who installed our vertical blinds. 

Happy baking! Remember, butter and sugar are our friends. Just make sure to exercise. :p


xoxo, 
Janice


OUR FAVORITE CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES
Mary and Sara Corpening
Yields about 24 cookies (Janice's note: Might yield more, depending on how big you scoop out the cookies)


1 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter or margarine at room temperature (Note: If using salted butter or margarine, you can lessen the salt used)
1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips or chunks
3/4 cup walnuts (Janice's note: I used a little less and you can use any nuts you like)
1/2 cup sweetened shredded coconut (optional)
2 healing tablespoons Nutella or peanut butter (optional)


Stir together flour, baking soda, and kosher salt in a small bowl. Set aside.
Stir together the egg and vanilla in a small bowl.
In another bowl, beat the butter and sugars together, until just mixed, about 20 seconds. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.
Add the egg mixture to the butter mixture and beat well, about 10 seconds. 
Reduce the speed to low and add the dry ingredients.
Stir in the chocolate chips. Stir in nuts, coconut, peanut butter, or Nutella, if desired. 


Position the rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 375 degrees F. 
Spray baking sheets with vegetable cooking spray or line with parchment paper. 


Drop rounded tablespoonfuls of dough 2 inches apart onto the baking sheets. 
Bake until the cookies are golden brown, 10-12 minutes (they will seem underdone).


Cool in the baking sheets for 2-3 minutes then transfer to wire racks and let cool completely. 

2 more easy meals...

...and of course, tummy-filling. As a married couple, we believe that volume is part of the food experience. Well maybe it's just me, but I speak for us...so there. Anyway...


In an attempt to be healthy (and it looked just soo darn good in foodgawker - warning provided in a separate post about this app), I decided to make some parmesan-crusted eggplants with tomato sauce. A few hours before, I had a small mini-attack and took out some chicken breasts to cook along with it because: (1) I was afraid the eggplant won't be filling enough and (2) the eggplant might look lonely. I hate it when food is lonely, so I always gather up some friends to keep it company. This is how I end up having vanilla ice cream with chocolate wafer bars.


Result: A supper yummy rice-less meal which we both loved. 

I promise there's chicken there somewhere...

See that white and yellowish part? THAT's the chicken.

I made a few tweaks to the recipe because I'm stubborn like that AND because Mr. G loves spicy tomato sauce. 


BREAD AND PARMESAN MIXTURE - I used stale bread and just put it in my super mini awesome chopper. I threw in a lot of parmesan, pepper, dried thyme, and dried rosemary. I don't know why, I just felt like it. :p


CHICKEN - After much research on my iPhone while on the way to get our deck set (more on this in another post), I concluded I could bake the chicken along with the eggplants. 20 minutes, flip, 15 minutes. Done. It came out perfectly. Moist and tender with the tastiest parmesan bits. I've always been afraid of cooking chicken (and of live ones too), because it's easy to over/undercook it. I did not fail this time. I love you chicken breast cooked in an oven. I loved you so much I ate you all. It was for your own good.


TOMATO SAUCE - You can follow the recipe. I made mine the way I know best: saute some onions in olive oil, throw in some pepper flakes, add diced tomatoes, a small packet of tomato sauce, dried thyme, dried rosemary, and dried parsley. Let it simmer and thicken. Taste and season with salt and pepper (LOTS of pepper - it's a happy spice...is there a sad spice??). 


Another easy recipe is one that's easy to make and a staple among Filipinos. My husband also claims to be Filipino (he had once asked what Filipino thing he gets once we get married. I told him, "half Filipino kids." He was referring to a passport or some sort of ID. So goes our daily conversations.) and loooooves this dish. Kats had sent me a link to this cute and useful blog a day after I had come home armed with sirloin, fully intending to make bistek tagalog. And at the very top of the page was this recipe for that very dish. What can I say, Kats and I are food soulmates. 

Yes, I know. That's a lot of rice.

The only tweaks I made were: (1) marinating the beef for a few hours and (2) thickening the extra sauce with some flour dissolved in water. I had admitted defeat early on because the beef wasn't getting the fried edges and I wasn't sure how long to cook thin sirloin slices. But gut told me they might become tough if overcooked, so I just pulled them out after 2-3 minutes on each side. It turned out gooooooooood. Moist, flavorful beef and onions. TONS of onions. My husband's plate is a proof. 

His plate was more onions than beef. Just how he likes it. 

Yes, that's San Miguel Light Beer. Mr. G loves them and almost peed in his pants (maybe not, but I can imagine how excited he was) when he saw these in the supermarket here. It is now a staple in our weekly grocery list. 


I also deserved a drink...

Vodka and cranberry like to hang out in our farm.

...and we both deserved this view after assembling the deck table and chair set. Okay, he mostly assembled it. And I mostly cooked. The world is fair. 

Happy days are spent out in this deck. 

xoxo, 
Janice

sunday at the park

A dear friend from Manila came over to visit for the weekend. 

We made a quick Sunday trip to the park to catch some sun. 

A lot of interesting sights :)

...and capped off the visit with more red velvet brownies :p 

PERFECT. 

xoxo, 

Janice

cheers to the sun...

...because it gets butter to room temperature faster :p 

Our favorite view. I hope the dogs don't knock down the solar lights we just installed!

I think this kitchen view always makes our dishes better. It's THE little sumthin' sumthin' that makes food special,
not drool that gets mixed into my brownie batter, as some have speculated.

Rarely photographed but I love these trees. They make me feel...smaller.

The sun is one of the things I am really grateful for lately. I can go to sleep without a jacket on. I love the cool weather in the farm, don't get me wrong, but a little variation is always fun. I love how one day I need to wear a hoodie, socks, Crocs (yes, I do now), and terry cloth pants and the next, I can wear a shirt, slippers and, well, terry cloth pants still. :p 

This dude is missing his terry cloth pants but looks to be enjoying the sun too.

Even the cupcake frostings I made over the weekend are celebratory of the sunny days. As I was about to put the BEST frosting EVER on the now on-demand (mind the small audience I have here) red velvet brownies, I had to stop myself and put the spatula down. I don't know if it's the five-times-in-two-weeks-is-too-much syndrome or the general let's-get-out-of-this-before-it-becomes-a-rut panic attack, but I just wanted to put another frosting on those brownies. I like to change it up. I'm crazy like that. I'm also boring like that. However you want to judge it. Anyway, I decided to make this cream cheese frosting instead.  I know, it's the classic combo and there's a reason for it. The frosting cuts through and complements the richness of the brownies. PERFECT. I just wanted to be a bad-ass and frost it with something non-cream cheese-y. Go against convention. Be the cool, non-conformist new baker. I failed. 


Now with a bowl of the BEST frosting EVER (red velvet exception already emphasized earlier) sitting in the fridge, I decided to make the Amy Sedaris vanilla cupcakes. I wanted to make the Magnolia Bakery recipe but I had only one egg left in the pantry, so...there. A good recipe but not quite the super moist cake I was looking for. I probably overbaked it since it was darker than the picture called for BUT it had a really great egg-y taste which I loooooved. 


I divided the frosting into two and added one heaping (HEAPING) tablespoon of Nutella to one (I've been meaning to make Nutella cookies and haven't gotten around to it, so thanks to Kats for the cupcake inspiration) and smooth peanut butter to the other. VOILA. BEST frosting EVER now even BEST-er!! :) 

I know. I need to use frosting bags. I don't know if I'll ever have the energy for it though. 

There is no limit to the Nutella you can add to the frosting recipe. It is ALL goooood.

Ditto for peanut butter. Go ahead. You know you want to. 

Important note, in case the photo captions are not clear enough: add as much Nutella or peanut butter as you like. Of course, consider the consistency of the frosting as you go too. You don't want a thick blob on your cupcake that you can't handle. Whatever that limit is :p


xoxo, 
Janice

big things come...

...in big packages. 


That's the case this week, at least. After a less than ideal Tuesday morning (my fault...of course), we came home early and found our duty-free port purchases being delivered and assembled in the garage!! Weeeeheeeeeeeee!! 


Mr. G got this (or as he says, WE got this) as a wedding present from the godparents R&D (a hundred bear hugs are not enough!!):

Yes, we have a small house but we make room for important stuff  :p

BUT I got this:

I clearly won "Most Metallic Purchase" 

...which now allows me to have these any time I want...

FYI: These are red velvet cupcakes. Just in case they looked like something else.

...well, not ANY time. There are times when I don't want to lift a finger and I wish the cookies would bring me, ummmm, themselves dunked in a glass of milk. I made these after we had cooked lunch for more people who were helping out, fixed cables, cleaned floors and walls previously covered by old cabinets and the oven. So we REALLY deserved to have some cupcakes. My friend Kats had been asking me to make these cupcakes and frosting for a while and I thought the new oven deserved a chance. It didn't disappoint but I was not wowed since I think I left them in the oven for too long. I was so used having to bake something for at least 50% longer than the recommended time that I didn't check on it too soon. 


BUT they were still pretty darn good. 


Mr. G ate two of these out of boredom the next day. 


We still think the red velvet brownies are better. Frosting for that is still THE BEST EVER. Which is good for me because the hardest thing about making cupcakes is putting the batter in the molds. Too messy. And I'm a lazy ass. Then again, I get to eat all the batter I clean out from the sides of the molds. Yoohoo. 


Anyway, lunch (and dinner) that day was chicken curry. Oh what can I say. Curry paste is heaven. It should be made into currency. It makes life yummy. YUMMY. 

I had intended to follow Donna Hay's thai chicken curry recipe but I couldn't find any fish sauce here and I wanted to use some potatoes too. So I searched for another one and found this chicken curry with potatoes recipe from Rasa Malaysia. I married the two recipes with my special home cook license and voila! Fragrant, yummy, tummy-filling curry!

Peeling the potatoes is optional. I got baby potatoes because I'm lazy.

xoxo,
Janice

snippets of the long weekend

Okaaaaay...


So, I haven't posted in a few days and someone already noticed. :p Anyway, I was happy to see on Facebook and i-message updates that my sisters and several friends were going on cooking sprees while I was pigging out 6 hours away from home. My hubby and I went with our godparents (in marriage) R & D, to Golfito to ogle, well, buy appliances and other stuff (ooops) in the duty-free port. I won't go into the gory details of what we bought for the house and wish we could take home (yes, stand mixer, you), but I will say we had THE most amazing time and gorged on the yummiest food. :) And yes, I remain to be a dumb-dumb and forgot to take pictures during the trip, but with a new camera in hand, I promise to document our next trips better. 


After we got back, we spent the following day on a cooking and baking spree since we...ummm...like to eat? Okay, so it was so we could use up leftover ingredients that almost went bad while we were out. It's hard to not have stuff get spoiled when you're only cooking for two (with an appetite for four) and most things in the grocery are packaged for more people to consume. 


Anyway, thus banana cupcakes. They turned out a little greasier than I thought they should. But who else is to blame but me because I used an entire stick of butter instead of about 3/4 because I was too lazy to guesstimate how much to leave in the container. ANYWAY... 

Mashing bananas is good for anger management.

...and PF Chang lettuce wraps, which is the best thing to cook (after fried rice) to use up leftover food in the fridge and pantry. The sauce is to die for too! Can be used for salads, just add more lemon or vinegar if you want.Thanks to my friend Anya who is also getting domesticated over in the coast of Australia for this idea :) 

Lettuce, schmettuce. We ended up eating this with rice.

We were also having some friends over after lunch, so we made our favorites to share: red velvet brownies...

I love the dude...so I handed over the whisk after mixing. 

...and chipotle wings. I. LOVE. YOU.

Wings for the brave.

It was a super nice and sunny day and a lot of them came out to play :p

Candy is the queen of the deck.

Bright additions to any party.

Of course, also those who can have chocolate and (tons of) alcohol. 

The weekend extended to the next morning as memories (or the lack of) courtesy of four vodka cranberries kept haunting me. I thought I was going insane when I looked out the kitchen window and saw this:

How was I surprised?! We have horses. We live in a farm.

xoxo, 
Janice


P.S. My new babies just arrived. Will drool over these after my much-needed nap! 

Dear Donna and Ina - We thank you for the excess pounds.

an apology to our oven

Okay. So...I have not been shy to blame all my so-so baked creations on our 20-ish old oven. Cake not too moist? Oven was too hot. Brownies with a burnt top? Oven was dumb. And the list goes on. 

friend or foe?

I owe this oven the biggest apology given by a human to a non-living thing. I don't know how many other times this has happened in history, but as far as I'm concerned, this is the most important one. 


After giving us the best chipotle wings this side of town (I don't know how competitors there are either), and the most awesome red velvet brownies EVER (it's the first we've tasted but still...whatever... the BEST...on top of it was the best frosting EVER too), and most recently, moist and tasty chicken with olives, I should have known it was never the oven's fault. 


I. AM. AN. AIRHEAD. Let's take this in the general sense and not get into specific circumstances, eh? It boils down to me not reading recipes well enough. For example, there is a SLIGHT difference when recipes ask for degrees C or F in oven temperatures. Basic stuff like that. An average person would have known. But I ain't average. I am below that. Vertically. And otherwise. 


So I suppose, I should move on to the most recent gifts from this oven to close out this apology. I'll feature the most recent 2 which have given us so much joy, we've allotted a specific range of weight gain this month just so we can enjoy without guilt. 


First up, red velvet brownies. I don't even need to tell you more than my husband ate 6 of these before lunch. I got a text from him after Spanish class saying, "There is cheese cake no more :( sorry!!" Okay, to get this right, let me set 2 facts straight: one, they were brownies (he loved them so much they could have been called doogie-shmoo-poo and he would have eaten them anyway); and second, he didn't eat them ALL. He just ate all the contents of the first of two containers. And his justification when I called him to get an explanation: "BUT baaaaabe, you said to eat something before lunch because it wouldn't be until 130pm!!" 

moist inside with a delicious layer of crunch on top

oh yes, those are squiggly frostings. because I'm fancy like DAT. but i later decided to squish down all of them.

I would marry this brownie if I weren't already taken.

I married the most awesome dude. 


Sooooo...the reason lunch would not be until 130pm that day was because I made chicken with olives via a recipe by Pioneer Woman. The lady knows her dark meat is all I can say. This is a slightly more complex "prep and forget-about-it" meal. I still managed to lay down on the couch with my husband while the chicken was in the oven. So, I say it counts under this category. I'm trying to rack up a couple of these easy meals to make so I can still cook when I start working. I imagine our weekdays to be: get home, prep ingredients, stick it in the oven or leave on the stove, shower or email (ahem), take it out, eat, wash dishes, eat dessert, brush teeth, sneak another dessert, brush teeth, pass out with a cookie in one hand. PERFECT. 

chicken thigh heaven

thanks for being so good. 

In other news, we just survived our first domestic disaster. I found it weird that there were flies around the kitchen. So we lit up candles (his 30th birthday ones) and put them on top of...an egg carton. My idea. OF COURSE. Soon enough, the whole thing lit on fire. Mr. G threw it out on the deck steps, managing to drop some burning bits of egg and carton on the couch and floor. Ergo...

and this is not even the worst burnt bit on the couch

this used to be my favorite pillow

I love how together, Mr. G and I manage to get into these comedic episodes. Anyway, time to get some more eggs! :)


xoxo,
Janice

yes, we can be healthy...

...despite what would be the most obvious judgement of us after the butter, sugar, and calorie fest we had over the weekend.

yes, we had intended to gain some weight after getting sick over our wedding week, BUT we had probably not chosen the best path to our goal. ooops. So as a couple, we VOWED to eat better yesterday right after we downed more chocolate cupcakes ala mode after lunch. luckily, I chatted with my best friend Mela (who now lives in Sydney and is becoming domesticated too) who mentioned her weekend lunch: a grilled vegetable sandwich. ding ding ding. fantastic idea all over: solves the dilemma on what to do with the vegetables in our crisper, it's pretty easy to do, and SEEMS like a light meal. 

The result? A fantastic dinner which was everything BUT light. :p Of course. Trust us to turn it into a big meal, no matter the original intent. Anyway, the point it, it was a great meal which I will now classify as "prep and forget" kind of meal, that is, you prep (chop then toss in olive oil, salt and pepper) for 5 minutes and then put it in a pre-heated oven and forget about it...as long as you remember to set your alarm to take it out of the oven after 45 minutes. During the waiting time, we had a little snack of chips and salsa because...that's what we do when we're...waiting. :)

So, back to the meal. Once it was out of the oven, we toasted some bread, sliced the avocado (Mela had said this was the "binder" of all the veggies in the sandwich...she was right), and took out some salt & pepper and kalamata olive spread for our condiments. 

hello there. onions, garlic, bell peppers, cherry tomatoes,  and zucchini

because we're fancy like that

A DIY open sandwich night...an invitation to overeating BUT hey, it's only veggies :p 

Mr. G's version. first of four.

my baby for the night. with the olive spread.

...here's the second one because I am an idiot and I forgot to put roasted garlic on my first sandwich. BOY did it make a world of a difference. And a note to couples who are still trying to be cute with each other: omit the garlic. Else, your relationship will take a turn either for the better or worse :p

...because I can and I REALLY wanted to have a second  serving.

Because we were SOOOO good and healthy for dinner, we had more cupcakes ala mode an hour after. We so deserved it. 

xoxo, 

Janice