If they have raisins, that makes it OK right?!?

5 cookies is what I ate for lunch.

I am terrible about planning for packing a lunch. I usually just eat leftovers. However the office for the new job doesn't have a microwave, and who wants to eat cold beef stroganoff? I made about 50 of these cookies for a fundraiser this evening, and they have been sitting on my desk tormenting me all day.
They are really called Ranger Cookies, but the first time I had them was when my mother in law Bobbie made them, and she's the one who gave me the recipe. I can't eat them without thinking of her, so we call them Bobbie Cookies.

The 45 left on my desk have cinnamon chips, dark chocolate chips, walnuts and raisins. So Fall-ish!
Last year for Christmas I added white chocolate chips, walnuts and craisins. Delicious!
My little brother loves peanuts, so for him I added peanut butter chips, peanuts, and peanut butter M&Ms. Amazing!
The possibilities really are endless!

Cream together: 1/2 c. butter, softened

1/2 c. crisco shortening

1 cup white extra fine sugar

1/2 c. light brown sugar, packed

Beat in: 2 large eggs

2 t. pure vanilla

In another bowl,

combine: 2 c. all purpose flour

1 t. baking soda

1 t. salt

1 1/2 cups coarsely ground oats (I use old fashioned oats

and pulse them a few seconds in the food processor.

Don't overdo this or you'll end up with oat flour.)

Stir dry ingredients into wet ingredients. Add in 3-4 cups of Extras in any combination

of your choosing. 4 cups will be chunky cookies, whereas 3 cups will be chewier.

EXTRAS: baking chips (besides the usual chocolate chips, try Heath chips,

white choc. chips, peanut butter chips, etc...)

candy (if using peanut M&Ms, crush first with a rolling pin or they

become too hard; if using candy bars, freeze & then crush into small

pieces; using candy with caramel doesn't work well because the

caramel hardens too much.)

Drop by large spoonfuls onto parchment lined baking sheet. Bake at 375 for 10-12 minutes

or until very lightly browned. Take out of the oven before completely done and let finish

cooking on baking sheet. Transfer to cooling racks after they've set up.

These cookies turn out differently everytime because you start with a base dough and add

a different variety of Extras each time. It is fun to experiment with the extras to find the

combination that is a favorite for you.

5 guilty pleasures

I just read this article on CNN, and it got me thinking about my 5 guilty pleasures. The 5 foods you are ashamed of admitting that you eat. Those ooey gooey or sickly sweet or those "how many calories did you say was in that" treats, that you eat only while driving in your car (alone), or standing over the sink (because really, eating food while standing up doesn't really count right). I'll admit mine:

1) Top Ramen and chilli- I admit it, sometimes I crave this even when economics doesn't demand that I eat it!
2) Sunkist- just thinking about it makes my teeth ache, but on those super hot day, nothing beats a so cold its almost a slushy bottle of sunkist.
3) McDonalds sausage egg and cheese buiscuit- somehow approaches breakfast perfection
4) Peeps- you must first open the wrapper and let sit for atleast one day before eating. I have no real color preference, but I'd rather eat the head off the duckies that the bunnies!
5) In N Out double double with extra onions, strawberry milk shake, and fries- Ok, I'm not really ashamed of eating this because anyone who has eaten this knows how amazing it is. This makes it's way onto the list for its "how many calories?!?" qualities. For this reason, it's a good thing I don't make it down to California much!

What are your 5 guilty pleasures?

I'm a loser! I'm a loser! And I don't care who knows it!

*I don't know if everyone has seen the movie Elf with Will Farrel, but everytime I get really excited about something and want to tell everyone about it , I picture the scene with Will (dressed as an elf of course) running around screaming "I'm in love! I'm in love! And I don't care who knows it"

So, After a 3rd luke warm attempt at weight watchers where I fluctuated between the same damn 5 pounds for 3 months I scrapped it. I am just not cut out for counting everything. I know it works for some people, and it works for me, but it is just too much change. I love to cook, and I love to eat. And if I want to use some olive oil on my veggies, damn it I'm going to, screw those extra points.

While feeling the tightening of my wedding ring on my finger (gold shrinks right? someone please tell me gold shrinks!), I came to the realization that I was going to have to suck it up and get a real exercise plan together. Finances are tight with me still looking for a job so a personal trainer was out. I was driving down the road one day and my car swerved to the left as I saw a Curves. Hmmm...I did Curves in high school with my mom, I lost inches, built muscle and kinda enjoyed it. ...I'll just go see how much it costs.

Finding that the monthly membership fee could fit into our budget and that for the month of June they were waiving the $150 joining fee, before I knew it I was being weighed, measured, and given a membership card.

For the past month I've been going 3 times a week and thouroughly enjoying it. I have had more energy and have been eating better because of it. I didn't realize how much I loved it until today though!

Each month they weigh and measure you. I was a bit nervous after missing a couple work outs last week and having a couple of terrible for me meals. But my nerves were for nothing!

Bust: -2.5in
Waist: -2.5in
Abdomen:-2.5in
Hips: -2.5in
Thigh:-1in (each)
Arms:-.5in (each)
Weight: -26lbs
Body Fat: -1.5%
BMI:-3.32

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?????????? 26 pounds and 13 inches in one month?!?!?!?!?!

Damn it feels good to be successful in this!
My body clearly needed more regular activity. This has far and away been the greatest motivation I have ever gotten. I'm going to try and up it to 4 work outs/week next month. I'm hooked!

Oh Pacey!

Well D is traveling for work and truth be told I've been looking forward to the alone time. I came home from work, put on my sweats and was delighted to find that the 1st season of Dawsons Creek was waiting for me in the mail box (yay netflix)!

I'm a few episodes into it and it is just as fantastic as I remember it. Teen drama at it's best! This is really taking me back to middle school. Somethings I forgot, or probably didn't notice is how truly horrible the clothes were, and how completly annoying Dawson was. I was (and still am) a total Pacey girl. How about you?

Dinner tonight was pretty simple. I just sauteed the veggies I had in the fridge (cherry tomatoes, asparagus, yellow peppers) in a little olive oil, garlic and red pepper flakes. Cooked up some pasta and tossed it all together. I do wish I had some good parmesan or myzithra to top it off with but, meh, it was still pretty tasty!

Tomorrow is Friday! Daylight savings has kicked my butt this week. So looking forward to sleeping in this weekend!

Reuben Hash

This is another Rachael Ray favorite! We were too hungry and it was so delicious that I forgot to take pictures, but here's the recipie and a picture from her website:

St. Patrick's Day Reuben Hash
Ingredients
1 pound baby white potatoes such as Yukon gold, quartered
1 tablespoon butter, plus additional for the toast
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil (EVOO)
1 pound corned beef left over from dinner or thinly sliced from the deli counter, cut or torn into bite-size pieces
1 medium onion, chopped
1 pack (about a pound) sauerkraut, drained, rinsed and squeezed dry
1/4 cup spicy brown mustard (eyeball it)
1 cup Guinness beer (eyeball it)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 cups (an 8- to 10-ounce block) grated Swiss cheese
4 eggs
4 slices rye bread, toasted and buttered
Yields: 4 servings
Preparation
Place the potatoes into a large pot and fill it with cold water. Place the pot over high heat and bring to a bubble. Turn the heat down to medium to cook the potatoes until tender but not falling apart, about 10 minutes. Once the potatoes are cooked, drain them and place them back into the pot they were cooked in to dry out for a few minutes.
Place a large, cast iron pan over medium-high heat with 1 tablespoon of butter and 1 turn of the pan of EVOO, about 1 tablespoon. Add the potatoes to the pan and cook them until they start to get golden brown, 4-5 minutes. Add the corned beef and chopped onion into the pan along with the chopped onion. Cook until the onions are tender, another 3-4 minutes. Stir in the sauerkraut, mustard and Guinness into the pan and cook to heat through, about 2 minutes. Season everything with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Sprinkle the cheese evenly over everything and cover the pan with aluminum foil to melt. While the cheese is melting, place a medium skillet over medium heat with the remaining tablespoon of butter. Cook the eggs however you or your guests like them (I love mine fried!). When the eggs are finished, remove the foil from the pan and dish the eggs over the pan. Cut the buttered toasts in half and line them up around the pan and let everyone have at it!

D is on the road for the rest of this week, so dinners will be less exciting. I am going to be making some chocolate guinness cupcakes, creamy jello shots and corned beef and cabbage for the Irish Days festivities this saturday, so look for those!

Also, stop in over at Fashion Meets Food: www.fashionmeetsfood.com/2010/03/oh-how-fabulous.html

Wish Erica a happy birthday and enter her awesome giveaway!

Irish Days

May those that love us, love us. And those that don't love us, May God turn their hearts. And if He doesn't turn their hearts, May He turn their ankles So we will know them by their limping.

Over the years, we have developed a"family" here in Missoula. When shit goes wrong (like it has for us this year) we know we've got an amazing network of some truly awesome people who have our back. About 5 years ago, we started celebrating that friendship with an annual shindig every March. It began with our fiesty Irish friend and our love of guinness and corned beef and over the years has grown to be quite the event. When we were all still in college, it happened on March 17th, now that we have "grown up" lives, it's moved to the saturday before or after and has been dubbed "Irish days". We cook and we eat and we drink and we sing and we toast (only old Irish toasts, of course)!

One of the staples of Irish Days is the Pasty. This little delight is more of an Irish-American dish, and allegedly originated in Butte, Mt. It's meat and potatoes in pie crust: perfect for the miners to pack for their lunches in the coal mines.

Ingredients:

Meat (chuck steak, ground beef, corned beef, leftover roast, whatever you want!)

Potatoes cubed

carrots

onions

Guinness

mustard

ketchup

salt

pepper

pie crust (I'm lazy and use store bought)

egg

Methods vary on pastys. Julie is usually the maker of the pastys so when I made them for our office function today I followed her method, but will share some ideas on how I'd do it next time!

How I did it:

Filling: Marinate the meat in guiness for an hour or so. cook the beer, potatoes, onions and carrots in butter and olive oil untill tender. Mix with mustard (I only had yellow which worked but I think spicy or dijon would be better), ketchup and seasonings untill it tastes good!

Crusts: Roll out the pie dough and cut into circles. Since I was making these for a crowd I cut them kind of small but if you were making them as a meal I'd reccomend making them bigger. Spoon the filling into the dough circles, fold over and pinch sides together.

Brush the crusts with egg so they brown up nicely and bake at 375 for about a half an hour or untill golden brown. Serve with gravy or ketchup, both delicious!

(ignore the 2 missing from the pan, they must have dissapeard in the oven!)

How I'd do it next time: So there are a couple problems with this method. The meat and potatoes tend to poke through the pie crust and the meat has a tendency to dry out. When I do this again, I think that I will add the meat and potatoes raw to the pie crusts and let the overn do all the work. I'm envisioning making little meatballs with the sauce, seasonings, carrots and potatoes all mixed up in the raw meat. I think this would solve the problem of the chunks poking out and the meat drying out. I'll let you know how it goes!

Dinner tonight is a rueben hash!

Chevre experiment gone right!

For our wedding I got a beautiful cook book full of delicious salads. One of the recipes that we've tried a few times is a fried feta salad, and it is amazing! I had some goat cheese in the fridge and decided to try it out with that. It turned out pretty darn good!

Ingredients:
Lettuce (again, I use the spring mix from costco)
Cherry Tomatoes
Yellow and Red peppers
Cucumbers
Olives
Goat Cheese
Flour
Egg
Olive Oil
Vinaigrette (we tried out a new sweet onion vinaigrette this time, it was great. I've used Greek dressing and just balsamic and oil before with the feta, all good!

Cheese: Usually for the feta, I can just slice it up and fry it, but the goat cheese was a bit more crumbly and wasn't holding its shape very well. So I rolled it up into balls. Dredge in egg and then roll in flour (you can season the flour up, I just used black pepper and salt, but play with it).
Fry the cheese balls in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil over medium high heat until all sides are golden brown.

Salad: Throw your veggies on a plate, the above is just a suggestion, add whatever you want! Top it with the hot cheese and pour on the dressing! Delicious!
I picked up a loaf of kalamata olive bread to go with it.

I do think that we like the feta better, but the goat cheese was pretty darn good too! The feta has a really great saltyness that the goat cheese lacks, bit I think it could be improved upon with some more seasoning or maybe an herbed goat cheese.

Tomorrow is St. Patricks Day! Don't forget to wear green! We do St. Pattys day up right here, so expect some fantastic dishes over the next couple of days!