Salad in the Grass

I wish these, the fruit, had grill marks.

This called for peaches, but some of my peaches are mushy so I used cheap mangoes from Jons.

Anna introduced me to Jons. It's a lovely adventure. They have rosewater and halvah and cheap mangoes and cheap lavash and cheap tahini.
Magic, except their spinach isn't bomb, but that's okay.

I roughly copied this except: mango instead of some of the peach and spinach instead of lettuce.

Good flavor party in your mouth. Be reserved with your feta use.
I think it's the grass.

-Amanda

Too Much Good Stuff

These muffins right here, what do you suppose they're made of? Flour, butter, sugar, maybe? With a few poppyseeds mixed in?

Nnnope!

Spoiler alert: recipe

If you want the story to unravel before your eyes, read on.

So once upon a time, there was a girl. She used to eat lots of poppyseed cakes as a child, because her daddy bought them at the Stolichnaya on Fairfax and Santa Monica. So she went to Berkeley Bowl and saw heaps of her favorite little seed, scooped them up into a hefty plastic bag, and tucked them away into her shopping cart. They sat in her cabinet, nestled between a bag of walnut pieces her grandma sent her, and a half-eaten emergency bag of chocolate chips.

Then one day everything changed. She came home after a month away (at her real home) and this bag of poppyseed went squish squish when she went digging through her cabinets. MUFFINSSSS.

Actually that was a lie. This girl just wanted lemon bars. But she ran out of powdered sugar. Fortunately, she later realized that she could make powdered sugar with her new mortar and pestle when (not really) making lemon glaze.

The poppyseed lemon muffins were a suggested link on the website with the lemon bar recipe. But it was not a satisfying recipe, so the girl scoured the web for something butterfree (shoutout to pokemon. not really. shoutout to buttersafe.com. so much funny!). THEN SHE FOUND a recipe. That she could use.

This story has lots of wholes in it and is not very professional.

Same with these muffins:

I used somewhere between 3/4c and 1c honey, 1/3c olive oil, 1-1/4c nonfat milk, 3 eggs, 2-1/4c whole wheat flour, 3-1/2 tsp baking powder, a tsp of sea salt, zest from one lemon, and a heaping 1/4c of poppy seeds.

I mixed the flour, baking powder, and salt, and then poured in a whisked mixture of honey, olive oil, milk, zest, and egg. It took a while to integrate the honey well, but it was worth it. It's all just preparation for the day you'll need to whip cream by hand.

I then mixed in poppy seeds, and poured the batter into (lined) cupcake and muffin tins. I baked at a preheated 400F oven, for approximately 20 minutes. Probably a little less. Toothpicks come out clean, it's nice. Voila

(see I know French too)

The most important point here is that poppy seeds are a Miracle! No they are not from papaver somniferum, which oozes when you slit it during growth, and morphines your soul. But Morpheus didn't forget about us normal-poppy eaters. He made sure that if you combine honey and poppy seed, you grow strong and mentally sound. If you're sleepy, you just eat some ground up poppy seed and away you go. Honestly, any problems you have, poppy seeds will fix them.

-Anna

Deadly Decadence

I made this for father's day. I didn't let it bake long enough/cool long enough or both so it was like lava when we cut into it.

So be careful. I didn't make the compote since it's not blood orange season and it seemed silly. Grand marnier though takes the cake. I mean it.


Oh and I used nonfat greek yogurt for the sour cream.
La recette, ça c'est ici. J'ai besoin de pratiquer mon français avant que je partie. Je ne sais pas si j'ai oublié toute ma grammaire.

Bien. Ecoutez.
-Amanda

Entering Cupcake Territory

These are snickerdoodle cupcakes. They're better than snickerdoodles, but they could have been moister and the frosting could have been fluffier. Still, this was easier than the other recipes I found.

I made these a while ago, this guy is stale. He got thrown a way right after this picture was taken. From glory to garbage.


Oh and I added nutmeg, just a tad.

I love melted butter. So here you go.

-Amanda

Blinchiki

Splash together some whole wheat flour, buttermilk, egg, olive oil, sugar, salt. Fry them up, little by litle--you have yourself nice, firm little blini. Then throw some fresh dark cherries in a saucepan with some water, cinnamon, golden brown sugar, and cornstarch--and simmer til thick and deep red. Drench a stack of a few blini with the syrup, then top with dark chocolate shavings. You've got yourself an Annariginal!



If you lay down some peanut butter first (chunky, always chunky), you get a nice oozing look to the dish.




This is what happens when Amanda's got me craving cherries.

I like that the chocolate shavings melt a bit. It gives it just the right amount of cohesion as a quick and appealing dish.


-Anna

When someone offers you wheat cookies at a party, you say yes

Here's the recipe, folks. So, I used less sugar (as usual), and no almond extract. The only one I have, I bought at some thai store on santa monica blvd, and it does not taste great. I imagine they'd be great with some though--Amanda, get on that!

They were pretty light, definitely not the typical chocolate chip cookie. People gobbled them up, but I don't think I liked them enough to make them again. Depends what you're after!

-Anna

Ay Conchitas Coloradas

As Amanda mentioned earlier..

We made conchitas!


Not only did we make them, we hand-carved them. As a kid, I was always drawn to the bright pink conchas in the Mexican dessert racks in grocery stores. I'd always scrape of the topping little by little, and bunch together little bits of its crumbliness to get it to my mouth. I'd usually skip the bread part--it was just dry and greasy (both at once!), and lacking in flavor.

These babies, however, were all ABOUT the bready part. Partially because the topping looked like poo.. We made a batch with margarine topping, and a batch with butter topping. I actually preferred the margarine variety, though I'm usually a butter person.

Here we GOO!


clabber clabber clabber. made the dough nice and apple vinegar-y :)


soft shaggy dough


nice inflated yeasty dough


pressing on the yummy tops


drawn-on concha shell pattern, plus a swirly shell


ooey gooey flexy flooey!


im making these again some day, i know it

-anna