bake-athon

the other afternoon we made a ton of cookies and it was so much fun! i used to bake a lot in high school but it was nothing compared to the amount of cookies we pumped out this day. for the chocolate peppermint cookies we used this recipe and the sugar cookies we used this recipe.

on sunday i leave for florida for a few days! my grandma and aunt live down there so my parents and i are going to spend a few days visiting, including christmas. i've never been to that part of florida so i am excited to see what it's like. i hope everyone has a great weekend!

pinterest fail

so yesterday my friend jess and i got together and spent the whole afternoon baking christmas cookies. we were ambitious. we picked out three recipes and planned on making all of them. like i said, ambitious! the one that we were most excited about was this recipe: pinwheel christmas cookies.

we had everything set and were following the directions to a T. how hard could they be?

well .. they showed us. about midway through the rolling of the two doughs together i realized that these might not turn out the way we had hoped. 

and sure enough .. they did not.

instead we had a pinterest fail at its finest.

they are totally edible .. just not very nice to look at.

the other two cookie recipes made up for it though.

more on those later in the week!

weekend tid bits

the rainy season has begun.

when it rains this much usually all anyone wants to do is watch movies and sleep.

so this weekend we didnt do much.

friday we went to p's sister's apartment with some other couples to eat pizza, watch the costa rica vs. guatemala game, and have some girl/guy talk. it was quite fun.

saturday, we went to the movies and saw men in black. it was cute but i remember the first one being way better. they probably should have stopped while they were ahead.

then today we didnt do so much.

since i've moved here i have noticed that p's family doesn't bake so much. now there is nothing wrong with that but i love to bake so i was quite surprised when his family was so amazed that i could make chocolate chip cookies.

i brought a little muffin pan with me from my last trip home and p has been wanting to try out some muffins. to start easy we got the simple...just add water kind. yep.

anyway, p was super proud to have made them by himself and they were delish.

the end, weekend.

a tuesday

so yesterday i walked into the middle school building and one of my students said, "be careful, teacher" and pointed to the floor.

and on the floor i saw about 50 bugs. but not just any bugs. these huge brown bugs with the bodies of wasps and even bigger wings. and when i say huge i mean huge. the bodies alone were about the size of my thumb.

it seemed like they had been sprayed or something because the majority of them were just laying there while some were unsuccessfully trying to crawl away.

i would have taken a picture but when i tried one of my students picked one up and started bring it really close to me....

i had the he-be-ge-bes the rest of the day.

so after school and after zumba (yeah, second time this week!), i decided to make this for dinner

sorry for the blurry picture!

just a plain chicken breast, sauteed in a little garlic, some avocado, tomato, sweet corn, and a little bit of lemon juice. extremely delicious, even boyfriend liked it.

what a guy...

 

the other day when i was really missing home and my friends, p decided he was going to cook dinner for me. now let me remind you all that no one in our apartment is a professional chef. we're both more of what you would say, extremely new to cooking.

even so, p made a very yummy red sauce with some whirly twirly noodles. then i just threw some avocado on top, because i put avocado on almost anything, sprinkled some  kraft parmesan cheese (that my parents graciously brought when they visited), and voila!

an extremely yummy dinner that i didn't have to cook. isn't he the best?

taco pasta

so the other night i tried a new recipe that i found here. taco pasta. i have been wanting to try this recipe for a while, since one of my roommates in spain used to make something similar. i found this recipe online because i couldnt remember the way my roommate used to make it! its really simple which is great because our kitchen isnt what you would necessarily call functional.

what you need is (as seen above):

ground beef, an small onion, tomato, a bag of pasta shells, a clove of garlic, taco seasoning, 3 oz of cream cheese, and some cilantro.

what you do:

chop up the garlic, onions, and tomato.

put some water to boil and cook the pasta.

brown the ground beef in a big pan. once brown, add the garlic and onions.

add the tomato and then the cream cheese and cooked pasta.

stir everything together until the cream cheese makes a sauce. add some water if its too thick.

serve in a bowl and add some cilantro on top.

voila! thats it!

super easy right?

sorry about the quality of these pictures .. i think my camera is on its last legs. time for a new one?

anyway, taco pasta was a huge hit as friends were invited over to try and now there is none left.

compliments to the chef

this saturday we took a little trip to the store to buy some things for our new "kitchen" so that we could finally start to cook our own food. its been so long since i have cooked my own food that i was getting really anxious to do so. obviously its easier to have someone always cooking for you but when its not necessarily what you want to eat or the quality of food that you would like to be eating, its always nice to be able to make whatever you want.

 so we got a nice little pan, a pot, a nice wooden cutting board, some knives, and a few little other things. i'm worried that the pot may be a little small but my options were either really small, small, or really large. so i went with the small one after paris reminded me that we are only two people.

 then today we took a little trip to the grocery store pali which around these parts is in comparison to market basket in massachusetts. so we filled our cart with a bunch of stuff and now our fridge is so colorful because its actually semi full!

 so for dinner i attempted to make my signature dish that i had made probably 3 or 4 days a week in spain (when i wasnt eating pasta with pesto sauce). chicken, with veggies in this case peppers, zucchini, and some spinach which is p's new favorite.

 and i must say it turned out pretty good! it tasted a little different than i expected but paris was pleased with it. he even ate all of the veggies whereas he normally refuses to even eat the little pieces of carrots that are in the rice his mom makes. this week i'm going to try some breaded chicken cutlets with the left over chicken we bought today. although i have to work on getting the portions right because tonight we had just enough for two people. i'm looking forward to trying out more recipes and experimenting with different foods to see what yummyness i can come up with.