Emergency Chocolate

1/4 cup chips (I prefer mixed butterscotch and dark chocolate chips)
1 Tablespoon smooth peanut butter
1/2 cup oatmeal (I prefer rolled oats)

Microwave chips and peanut butter on high for a minute. Mix.
Add oatmeal. Stir.

Enjoy. With milk.

Notes: Makes 1/2 cup- just the right size for a XS Round Bowl from Glad.This recipe actually makes just a little more than I want in one sitting, so I measure small. 2/5 of the calories come from the oatmeal, 2/5 from the chips, 1/5 from the peanut butter. The rolled oats take a bit of chewing, which allows you to savor the chocolate peanut butter that much longer and makes your brain think you’ve eaten a lot.

This isn’t something I would serve to someone, but when there’s no junk food in the house, it can be just what The Doctor ordered. Pictured is 1/2 a recipe.

Homemade Pop Tart Adventure FTW!!

 

I was reading Lifehacker.com the other day and there was a post about how much better homemade pop tarts are than the store bought variety. Of course I wanted to make some right away but I don’t have time for that just any day during the semester. I’ve been intending to make them any day ever since. The article I read, which ultimately had come from the New York Times or something, had recommended making frangipane to fill the pop tarts. That sounded really good, but it turns out that I don’t just keep almond paste or any such thing around the house normally, so that wasn’t an option.

Fortunately, I remembered my love of dates. Grampa Slim had given me a nice big box of dates and I don’t use them nearly so often as I would like. I thought date pop tarts would be just the thing. I used 16 dates, no recipe, a cup of water and a cup of sugar with some heat and a bean mashing tool. The next thing I knew, I had a smooth, yet chunky date filling ready to go. I won’t tell you how good it was because I’m trying to be modest. (Maybe I’m failing to be modest, but just think how bad I could be without even trying!)

I made the pastry according to the recipe I found, mostly. I didn’t refrigerate the dough or take any suggested precautions to make sure it turned out well. I thought it turned out pretty well anyway. They don’t look professional by any means, but these were made for eating, not selling. I documented the process with my camera phone. I plan to put up the recipe on the recipe blog soon and insert the link here.

Update: Recipe posted.
Robertson Family Chefs
Turner Family Recipes 

Food Again!

I just can't help it. I make beautiful meals that have to be shared with the world!
Tamara made tacos last night, so I had taco salad for lunch. That comprises the two containers on the left. I mixed them together in my Bento canister's lid because the individual containers just weren't quite big enough. I also had carrots, green beans, tropical fruit, and pear sauce.

I Have a Good Wife

It's our first full day at home since we've been married and things are still a little bit crazy around the apartment. I'm still in process of moving in, so I have boxes and stuff everywhere. We're trying to do laundry while finding places to put all of our wedding presents. Tamara's trying to get ready to start her graduate program early tomorrow morning, and she still found time to go to the grocery store and buy me food. Then, while I was busy working on my own stuff, she cooked me a beautiful meal. She made Salisbury steak, purple cauliflower, and red potatoes. It's on one of our new plates from our wedding. :-)

We were so glad to have a whole day to just be home together and work on things before going back out into the world doing work and school. We listened to a lot of good music together. We took a nice long nap. We did a lot of housework. It was a good day.

To see honeymoon pictures, visit the web album.

Yum. Lunch

I'm not going to blog my lunches all the time. This is just an example of what kinds of things I might eat on a school day when I haven't planned ahead very well.

Here are a couple of my fantastic lunches. Each of these containers has its own lid and stacks into a thermal container. The container isn't quite waterproof, but it goes into a zippered nylon canvas bag with a fork and a spoon and chopstics and a napkin, so it all works out pretty well.

The first picture has brown shortgrain rice w/ spaghetti sauce and tuna, cottage cheese and strawberries, red beans, and strawberrys and papaya.

The second picture is today's lunch. It has spaghetti, strawberries and apple, strawberry banana yogurt and plums, and more stawberries and apples.

I love my bento. I would never have such great lunches if I were still using a regular tupperware.