Sending a piece of home overseas...

Today is a very special day for two reasons: 1) I'm baking cookies to send to an awesome Marine and 2) in exactly one year from today I will hopefully be starting culinary school! I'm almost ready to send in my application and will be crossing my fingers until I hear if I'm accepted for the Fall term or if I'll have to wait until the winter term... Let's hope I get into the Fall term! :)

Anyway, back to baking...

So over the summer I sent a care package to a young Marine whose mom works with my dad. I randomly remembered that my dad had a co-worker whose son was deployed, so I asked for his address to send a care package. I think I went a little overboard, but he did get it and told his mom to thank me, so hopefully him and others in his company were able to make some use of the contents! His mom said he loves to get baked goods, so of course the nest package must be some cookies! So I'm going to make some Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies (which I know I already kinda did a couple weeks ago) to send to Afghanistan. Maybe it'll inspire you to find a service man or woman to send a little bit of home to while they are serving their country.

So along with the recipe (it's a different one then last time), I'll post how to package cookies so they stay fresh while they journey overseas to the Marines.

Chewy Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies
1 cup butter softened
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups AP flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
3 cups quick oats
1 cup chocolate chips
Optional: 1 cup chopped walnuts (I'm not adding theses, because I don't want to risk any allergy problems in his company)

325 degrees for 12 minutes. Yield: about 3-4 dozen


Oh! And the movie of the hour is Sherlock Holmes, I just finished the BBC series, Sherlock, so I decided to finish my marathon off with a movie version! After watching all this Sherlock business, I feel like a detective, haha!

Back to cookies!

 So to package these babies, I think I remember how his mom told me how to do it, so lets hope this works...

Let the cookies cool for a few minutes, and then wrap a single layer of cookies in paper towels. Then wrap that in plastic wrap. Then put them in a ziplock baggie and stick a piece of white bread inside and try to get as much air as possible out. And that's about it! Then write a note and go send the finished package to your service man or woman!



I hope you've been inspired to send a little piece of home to anyone serving our country, to let them know much we all appreciate them!

Have a fantastic week!


Vi Ses,

Holly

United States Marine Corps

Recipe source: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/chewy-chocolate-chip-oatmeal-cookies/

Pictures taken by me!

Diet Coke Brownies!!

So I'll admit it, I love Pinterest! I've wasted way too many hours pinning away, and I have a Food & Stuff board where I save all the fun food ideas I see. But who actually goes back to their pins and makes something? Well I've decided to start trying some of the awesome and not so awesome recipes, and sharing them on here! Last week I tried one (that I forgot to document) that were corn muffins with tofu hot dogs inside, like little corn doggies! They were fabulous with a bowl of veggie chili! YUM!
So as I was prowling my Food & Stuff board, I found a very intriguing 'too good to be true' recipe I pinned long ago, Diet Coke Brownies! NO WAY, RIGHT? Well this was just too simple, that I had to try it!

I happened to have a can of Vanilla Coke Zero on me, but I didn't want to screw anything up, so I bought a bottle and measured out 12 ounces (and finished the rest off mahhh-self). I don't have a picture of what it looked like when I mixed it, but boy was it foamy! I was a little concerned, but kept on going! So here's the very complicated recipe (for official sake):

1 can Diet Coke
1 Box Brownie Mix

 Bake at whatever temp, but mine didn't take too long, so I would check about 10 minutes before.

So here's the verdict:

Not too bad. One of my lovely roommates was home to test them with me, and we both decided that we had confused feelings about these little babies. They came out a bit gelatinous and the after taste is a bit strange (but thats probably from the aspartame and other chemicals in the diet coke).

My other roommate's fiancé just tried them as well and said they taste like those TV dinner brownies (the package with the penguin on it) and I totally agree! One of those things where you know it's not going to taste to fantastic, but the novelty makes you want it anyway!

And if you want to know... The blog I got the recipe on said if you cut them into 24 pieces, then they are about 105 calories each and have 0.5 grams of fat...

So I would consider these a minor success! Since they don't taste bad, they are not a total failure! Will I do these again? Maybe, but I may try using a Coke Zero instead, since it doesn't have that much of a chemical taste... But try them out! Fun, creative and new ways to bake and cook are always an adventure and usually have good stories to go along with! Oh and if you were concerned with what I was watching while I baked today, it was a National Geographic documentary called Bear Island, which was all about this relatively secluded area in Alaska that is one of the last places where brown bears live in a large population.

Here's the blog I got the recipe from: http://auntpegsrecipebox.blogspot.com/2011/02/diet-coke-brownies.html#.UGeJKBxeDw4

Pictures were all take by me!

Crepes! (Attempt #1)

So last night I was conflicted on what to make for dinner. Not having done a normal grocery shopping in like 2 weeks, supplies are dangerously lowering. I noticed we had one egg, and naturally I thought, CREPES! Well maybe that wasn't exactly how I thought of making crepes, but it's basically the gist of the situation.

Here's the recipe I used (which I halfed):
(and the movie I was watching while making my crepes, Superstar!)

I really don't remember the site I got this from...

Supa Staaaaar!

I have two fantastic crepe memories, the first is from when I was in high school, and our crazy french teacher would let us have secret "culture days," which were not allowed, due to the school not wanting fires to start in the language department. But we did it anyway (as well as sell black marketed french bon bon candy, but that another story). The other memory that comes to mind is much more recent, one in which, Claire (one of my best friends) and I were in PARIS, FRANCE. Yeah, flippin' France, people! It was awesome! We had nutella crepes, on the Seine, in front of Notre Dame! It really does not get any
better than that.

Anywho, back to living in the redwood forest, I had a yearning for some delicious crepes... which turned out to be kind of a disappointment, compared to the high expectations I had. Maybe its the fact I've only made crepes myself once, or that I guesstimated the ingredient amounts, or I don't know... They just weren't fantastic. Don't get me wrong, they were satisfying, but not out-of-this-world.

YUM?

Like I said, they weren't fantastic, neither was the movie to be honest, but with a little lemon juice and powdered sugar, I gleefully ate my fill! :)

Hopefully I'll make a little something more exciting this weekend, so get pumped!

Vi Ses!

Holly

Oatmeal Chocolate Cranberry Cookies

As I was eating breakfast this morning, I realized that I still had 2 hours until the library opened, so naturally I decided to bake some cookies! I had just gone to the store yesterday, and I bought like $0.30 worth of quick oats (I buy all my baking supplies in bulk! Which is fantastic because I don't have to overbuy anything, and it's always way cheap!) because I knew I wanted to make some oatmeal cookies. I also bought some chocolate covered cranberries, just for a treat throughout the week, but when I began mixing my cookies together, I didn't have enough chocolate chips, and the cranberries seemed to be a perfect add in! And they totally were! I love to take a recipe and add my own little flare to it! 

Typically when looking for a recipe, I turn to the internet because, let's be honest, it has EVERY and ANY recipe you could ever imagine! So here's the one I found this morning...

Oatmeal chocolate Chip Cookies

1.5 c brown sugar

1 c butter, softened

1 t. vanilla

1 egg

2 c. quick oats

1.5 c. unbleached flour

1 t. baking soda

.25 t. salt

1 c. chocolate chips

1 c. nuts

350°  for 9-11 minutes

-Preheat Oven. 

-Mix all wet ingredients. 

-Mix in dry ingredients. 

-Mix in add-ins. 

-Scoop onto pan and bake for 9-11 minutes.

I'm a pretty simplistic person, and with the baking class I took in high school, I may tend to abbreviate recipes, so you've officially been warned!

With this recipe, I used 1 cup of unbleached flour and 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour and omitted the nuts and used chocolate cranberries instead. It turned out très delicieux!

Usually when I bake, and I have my recipe up on the computer, I like to watch movies, TV shows, or other fun stuff on the internet. This time I was in the middle of a 2 hour interview with one of my favorite actors, Nick Offerman, who plays Ron Swanson on my favorite TV show, Parks and Recreation. Ron Swanson is the individual who gave inspiration for my blog name, Food & Stuff, where, in the show, he "buys all of [his] food and most of [his] stuff." He really loves food, so don't be shocked if he floats in and out of some postings.

Well I hope, if anything, you are inspired to take some time today and bake something delicious for family, friends, or just for your own pleasure! 

Vi Ses!

Holly

Links: 

Base Recipe:
http://www.bettycrocker.com/recipes/oatmeal-chocolate-chip-cookies/48acadc3-f7e1-46b5-bb33-33bee95f6cf7

Nick Offerman Interview:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zISwPLQiHg

All Photos taken by Holly Cavanaugh

Hello!

I've been blogging for a few years now, and felt like a needed a change in my virtual world, so I'm off to adventure in the Food Blog Arena! So Hello! And welcome to this fun new space of mine! Get that cute apron on and set out your bowls and whisks, because we are about to explore some deliciously scrumptious treats!

Before we really get into the nitty gritty, I guess I could tell you a little about myself...

Hi! My name is Holly, and I am a senior at Humboldt State University in northern California. I consider myself a Danish-Chinese-Irish-American and love experiencing different cultures! I've always had a love for food, and am actually filling out my cooking school application right now, I'm so excited to go and learn as much as I can, but before that can happen I need to graduate college!

So please join me in my adventures with food throughout my senior year of college! There should be a pretty wide array of food, but don't be too surprised if most of it is SWEET.

Well that's enough of this rambling, I need to go start on baking something for my real first post!

Vi Ses! (That's Danish for 'See You!')

 Holly