Day 11 - Peanut M&M Cookies

With a select few exceptions, it's hard for cookies NOT to look appetizing. <3

 Prompts: Make a snack based on a teacher’s favorite ingredient. As a bit of my throwback, I based this on the fact that my high school orchestra director very frequently had a pack of peanut M&Ms.

The thought process: After coming up with the ingredient to base this recipe off of, it was just a matter of what kind of ‘snack’ I wanted to make—I knew with M&Ms the best options would be either cupcakes or cookies, and not wanting to mess with icing (and having the ingredients all ready for cookies), I decided to go with the latter.

Self-reflection: I LOVE BAKING.

It’s not super difficult, the result usually tastes absolutely delicious, smells great, and it’s overall just really satisfying. Cookies are one of my favorite things to make from scratch, it’s just so rewarding to have them turn out well and being able to say you made the dough yourself. I think that one day when I come up with my own recipe, it will be some sort of cookie dough, and hopefully it will be delicious.

The only thing that was a little negative about this particular recipe was waiting for the cookies to bake and getting sad about weird random things in the downtime, though that might be more attributable to the fact I was listening to Tchaikovsky’s sixth symphony at that point.

Also, I always make too many cookies or make them too big, but it’s usually okay because they disappear really fast! Even I was surprised at how good these particular ones turned out.

Quote to sum up the cooking process: “Cookies were much better eaten then sold, and they were best homemade.”

Recipe Credit: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/10785/robbis-mms-cookies/

Day 10 - Placeholder

Prompt: Make a brunch based on a friend's favorite cooking technique. The person I asked told me she liked "cooking dinner food," and as such a brunch based on dinner food is a challenge I'm willing to take on.

I haven't been able to get around to this one yet, but it will be here soon, I promise. Stay tuned!

Day 9 - Reese's Bars

Picture coming soon

Prompt: Make a breakfast based on a stranger's favorite holiday special. A cashier at Publix gave me "Home Alone" after I told her in too much depth about this project.

The thought process: For whatever reason I didn’t feel like watching the movie, so I googled to try to see if there was anywhere that had compiled the food that appeared in Home Alone. Just my luck that the internet is a wonderful amalgamation of rather random information, and I happened to find this site: https://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/all-the-food-eaten-in-home-alone-home-alone-food-scenes

After getting over the fact that this webpage existed, I looked at the food it described. There was a lot of deliberation involved in deciding what to cook, mostly because I didn’t think I could handle making anything quite so imaginative or large in scope. Thinking about the sundae he made in the movie led me to get ideas based on candy I liked, and I couldn’t resist trying a recipe that was intended to emulate Reese’s.

Self-reflection: I’m going to market some new cleaning product that uses powdered sugar as a base, because I learned the hard way today that when you spill a lot of it on the floor (and I mean a lot), cleaning it up tends to pick up the other weird gunk that’s been stewing on the kitchen floor for a while.

Ignoring that gross observation, the recipe itself was fantastically delicious. It’s still in the refrigerator as I write this but it’s one of few batters that I’ve been willing to try, and once I did I couldn’t resist having the rest of the batter scraps. It’s pretty simple to make, doesn’t require too much in the way of ingredients, and has no unforeseen challenges. I was worried initially that it would prove difficult to make crumbs from graham crackers. Boy, was I proven wrong about that. They need a name change to reflect how crumbly they are. Regardless, this recipe definitely comes highly recommended, kudos are certainly in order to the person who came up with it.

Quote to sum up the cooking process: “Bless this highly nutritious microwavable macaroni and cheese dinner and the people who sold it on sale. Amen.”

Recipe credit: http://www.thatskinnychickcanbake.com/homemade-reeses-bars-twosweetiepies/

Days 7 and 8 - Cornbread and Chicken Noodle Soup

These pictures are starting to look very similar. I almost re-uploaded the pancakes.

Prompts: Day 7: Make a lunch based on a stranger's favorite movie. A cashier at Target gave me "The Hunger Games." Day 8: Make a dinner based on a teacher's favorite ingredient. My friend's mother, who so happens to be a teacher, gave me tarragon, which had a lot of options.

The thought process: I may have done these a bit backward in that I made sure the recipe based on the Hunger Games went well with the soup, but regardless, I believe that it was a good decision. The cornbread was because District 12, in Panem, is located in Appalachia, and Peeta makes bread, and this happened to be one of the things that popped up when I googled "Appalachian bread recipes," so there you have that.

The tarragon was a bit harder to base something off of--a lot of what I found involved using a lot of mayonnaise, a condiment that kind of disgusts me on its own, and as such I was trying to avoid that. I was fortunate enough to come across a chicken noodle soup recipe that utilized the spice, and it definitely went really well with the cornbread.

Self-reflection: After I put the food left from this recipe in the fridge I realized just how much food I’d made over the course of the last few days. There are a lot of leftovers and a lot that needs to be eaten, and I made way too much of both things today. I’m going to start paying more attention to the size of the recipes and cutting down to a reasonable amount with that.

The recipes themselves were rather straightforward and easy to make. My only complaint is that my bigger mixing bowls have been in use for holding food in the fridge and I miss them dearly, as the smaller ones make a much bigger mess when it comes to mixing large amounts of ingredients. Also, it was a bit hard to tell when the soup was done. Simmering is a process that does not exactly have a clear ending.

As for the taste of the food, the soup was extremely delicious, though it got cold a bit too fast for my taste and there was a bit too much broth in comparison to actual ingredients. Also probably a bit too much of the spices, but it gave the broth a pretty great flavor. The cornbread itself was extremely bland, but when combined with the soup made for a great combination.

Quote to sum up the cooking process: “I got you some waffles here, courtesy of J.J.’s Diner, and chicken soup, courtesy of me.”

“I’ll take the waffles, thank you!”

[interim dialogue]

“I left the chicken soup just in case, it’s not a big deal, just an old family recipe.”
“Thank you for that.”

(from a super cute Ben/Leslie scene in Parks and Recreation Season 3)

Recipe Credits:

Chicken noodle soup: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/25759/steves-chicken-noodle-soup/?internalSource=recipe%20hub&referringId=1075&referringContentType=recipe%20hub

Cornbread: http://appalachianheartwood.blogspot.com/2013/07/mamas-appalachian-corn-bread-recipe.html