.. snow day, sweet tooth, kraft so easy ... oh my! ...

To be honest with you, I was not overly thrilled to wake up to see snow. I knew it meant a day stuck in the house. (Yes, I am your typical southern girl of staying in when it snows.) Well, I shouldn't say snow. It was freezing rain that had fallen on the ground and eventually formed a large ice pad in my back yard. But! I remembered this is the first time Lola (my pup) has ever seen snow! And to add to this mile marker for Lola, today she is exactly 5 months old! Lola wasn't thrilled about the snow/freezing rain either. I'm sure she remembers the freezing rain we encountered earlier this year. She hated it, as did I. But Lola gave it a chance and explored a little today and tried to figure out why there was no grass to go to the bathroom on. Of course, upon finishing her business outside, she came running back into the warm house. She is such a miss priss and spoiled rotten! The rest of my day, I spent cleaning up the house, being my room mate moved out this past week. Being stuck inside, this was a good time to do some reorganizing around my house.

On the verge of cabin fever syndrome and having nothing to do other than sit around the house after cleaning, I decided I would cook. I recently have had this very big sweet tooth that I can't seem to satisfy. Without having to leave the house, due to the bad weather conditions, I found I had all the ingredients for Oatmeal Raisin Cookies, minus the raisins and substituting chocolate chips instead. It's really simple and they are yummy!

Quaker Oats Vanishing Chocolatechip Oatmeal Cookies
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: 8-11 minutes

Ingredients:
1/2 cups (1 stick) plus 6 tbs butter, softened
3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1-1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
3 cups Quaker Oats, uncooked
1 cup chocolate chips (or raisins if you like them instead)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In large bowl, beat butter and sugars on medium speed of electric mixer until creamy. Add eggs and vanilla; beat well. Add combined flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt; mix well. Ad oats and chocolate chips; mix well. Drop dough by round tablespoonfulls onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until golden brown. Cool 1 minute on cookie sheet; remove to wire rack. Cool completely. (I don't let my cookies cool all the way before putting them in a container, being if there is a little bit of steam from the cookies in the container it seems to keep the cookies a little softer and moister. Oatmeal Cookies can sometimes be a bit hard and rough on the mouth.) Store tightly covered.

For dinner ... I have been postponing this recipe, more or less because it has been such a busy week that it was nice to get take out for the past few days. But it's back to cooking! Tonight's challange ... Kraft Pesto-Chicken Italiano. I found this on the back of the the Kraft Italian Five Cheese Blend bag. It's basically Chicken Pesto with a fancy name. Yipee! It actually was quite yummy, quick and easy. Always a plus when cooking. Being it is now just Lola (my pup) and I, I have leftovers for tomorrow for lunch. Dinner tomorrow at the rents, pending weather.

Kraft Pesto-Chicken Italiano
Prep: 10 minutes
Total: 25 minutes
Serves: 4 (1-1/2 cups each)

Ingredients:
1 tbs oil
1lb. boneless skinless chicken breasts, sliced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 large red pepper, cut into thin strips
1/4 cup pesto
1 lemon, cut in half, divided
1 cup KRAFT shredded Italian Five Cheese Blend
2 cups hot cooked angel hair pasta

Directions:
1. Heat oil in large nonstick skillet on medium heat. Add chicken and garlic; cook and stir in 4 to 5 minutes or until chicken is evenly browned. Stir in peppers; cook 3 to 4 minutes or until chicken is done, stirring frequently.
2. Stir in pesto and juice from 1 lemon half, top with cheese. Cover; cook on low heat 2 to 3 minutes or until cheese is melted. Spoon over pasta.
3. Serve with remaing lemon half, cut into wedges.

Note: Since I don't want to risk the roads to run out and get a RedBox movie, I am sitting here in my living room watching Julie & Julia, my main inspirational movie! Love it!

... go go apple ipad ...

Wednesday, January 27, 2010, Apple announced their newest gadget, the iPad! To be honest with you, I am VERY excited about the iPad. Why you may ask? Well, those of you that know me: 1. I am a designer - so of course I am on a mac base platform; 2. I am in a love relationship with apple products. I love apple! (Think about it: 1. They don't tell me what to do, 2. They're easy and accommodate me, 3. Always loyal, 4. Never give me a difficult time. What is there not to love? haha ...); 3. Apple makes products and programs simple by using common sense. Think smarter, not harder; 4. I have been wanting a small laptop that I can use to carry ALL my music (being my large old school iPod finally decided to fry its hard drive; RIP), videos, play games, check e-mail, blog! (of course) and surf the web ANYWHERE. Just think! If I had an iPad right now, I could do a heck of a lot more blogs! More blogs = more thoughts, more inspirations, more interests and of course more fun. Ultimately, iPad = no more wasting time and more brain functioning. Yes, the iPad looks like a glorified iPhone, minus the phone part, but hey! who cares?! Plus! I love my iPhone and would not trade it in for any other phone. (Well, maybe trade it in for an upgraded 3GS! It is still an iPhone though!) iPads are going to be above and beyond the netbooks out there, yes, I know that is what Apple has marketed, but! knowing Apple, they will release the iPad and it can only go up from there. Plus, I've never heard of a promise that Apple has made to their customers and have not kept their promise. They are all about expanding the product their customers already have. I heard through the grape vine, the iPad is to be released sometime in March or April (possibly?). I can hardly wait! I'm definitely going to be one of those crazies that have to hit up the Apple Store as soon as they are released to try it out. Look out South Park Mall, here I come! I hope there will be an Apple representative booth at the HOW Design Conference I am going to in June! Only time will tell! If I do decide to get an iPad, goal would be to let it stay out on the market for a while to let them work out the main kinks. Maybe December 2010 Christmas gift to myself? We will see ... Plus, not like I have a spare $500 right now for a new gadet. (Don't forget I am a homeowner and now a dog owner too!) The only let down of the iPad visually is no webcam. So Apple, slap a webcam on there and you have yourself a buyer! Guess I better start saving now for an iPad!

Click here to watch videos on the iPad, including the Keynote Presentation of the Apple iPad.

... Quick & Easy Does the Trick! ...

Food Network during lunch time does it again! Once again, I was watching Food Network on my lunch break. The show: Rachel Ray. (Did you know she never went to cooking school and learned all her cooking from her Grandmother, AND she has a beautiful gorgeous diamond wedding ring! Jealous!) This is a really simple, easy and cheap recipe! I managed to make this after my 1.5 hour homeowners meeting, including stopping at the grocery store to pick up some last minute items. All done before 9pm!

Orzo with Feta & Tomatoes
Rachel Ray

Prep Time: 10 minutes
Level: Easy
Cook Time: 10 minutes

Ingredients:
1/2 lb orzo
salt
2 tbs butter
1 cup fetta cheese crumbles
1 handful of parsley leaves, chopped
1/2 pint grape tomatoes, halved
Freshly Ground Black Pepper

Directions:
Heat water in large sacuse pot to boil and add pasta, cook to al dente.

Melt butter in the pot while still hot and combine with fetta. Add cooked pasta to feta butter and toss with parsley and tomatoes, season with a little pepper.

To add to this dish, I pan seared a chicken breast, cut in half, marinade in herb and garlic marinade. It was like marinaded grilled chicken fingers. YUM! I was too lazy to fire up the grill.

Side Note: I have been uber busy this week and have totally missed out on posting some items I would like to blog about ... so guess what I'm doing this weekend ... catch up! Keep an eye out for my review on the pre-screening of Mel Gibson Edge of Darkness movie, as well as my excitement over the news release on the newest apple product, the ipad!

... Recipe of the Week ...

Last week, while eating my lunch in the studio in front of the TV, I switched over to the Food Network channel. (Day time television stinks. I give mad kudos to those people that stay home all day and actually try to watch TV.) Barefoot Contessa was the show.

My first impression of Barefoot Contessa is all her recipes are overly rich and fattening (something I do not need). But surprisingly after watching her make this easy baked shrimp scampi, I was inspired to try it. I immediately looked up the recipe online and printed it off to try. However! Her recipe was made to serve 6 people. That is 4 more servings than I needed. (I let my room mate be my guinea pig when it comes to trying these recipes.) So! I halfed the recipe, which ended up being perfect for serving 3. So guess what is for lunch?! Left overs!

Here is the recipe halfed for all of you non-6 member families:

Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics
Baked Shrimp Scampi

Prep Time: 30 minutes
Level: Easy
Cook Time: Approximately 15-20 minutes
Serves: 3

Ingredients:
1 lbs (12-15 per lbs) shrimp in shell
(For all of you like myself, who are totally clueless to this, I just grabbed a bag of frozen medium shrimp, that looked like the bag was well full.)
1.5 tbs olive oil
1 tbs dry white wine (you probably could get away without this)
6 tbs unsalted butter
2 tsp minced garlic (the recipe suggested fresh, but i already had minced garlic in a jar i bought at the local market)
1/8 cup minced shallots (approximately 1/2 a shallot)
1.5 tbs minced fresh parsley
1/2 tsp minced fresh rosemary
1/8 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp grated lemon zest (be sure to do this before juicing the lemon)
1 tbs freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 large egg yolk
1/3 cup panko (Japanese Dried Bread Flakes)
(You can find these in the international isle at the market)

Dish:
Baking dish approximately 6" - you will need enough room to spread your shrimp around to make 1 layer (I used a round pyrex dish that is oven safe - thanks mom for the pyrex set!)

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.
Peel, devein (if you want - doesn't change the taste, just the look) and butterfly the shrimp (You can sometimes find the shrimp already butterflied if you buy them frozen. I used frozen shrimp.) Leaving tails on. (I took the tails off, who wants to eat shrimp scampi and have to worry about picking around the tails?!)

Place the shrimp in a mixing bowl and toss gently with the olive oil, wine (I didn't have the dry white wine, but had some tropical Arbor Mist in my refrigerator that I used instead. It still turned out terrific), 2 tsp salt and 1 tsp pepper. Allow to sit at room temperature while you make the butter and garlic mixture.

In a small bowl, mash the softened butter (if it is still cold, put it in the microwave for 1 minute on 3 power - works like a charm) with the garlic, shallots, parsley, rosemary, red pepper flakes, lemon zest, lemon juice, egg yolk, panko, 1/2 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp of pepper until combined.

Starting from the outer edge, place shrimp in a single layer. (I laid them out so that they leaned up against each other like a bunch of dominos had just fallen) Pour the remaining marinade over the shrimp. Spread the butter mixture evenly over the shrimp. (Easier said than done, it was more or less little globs of the butter mixture. It works best, if you use a fork to break up the mixture and use it to fork out small globs of the butter mixture on top.)

Bake 15-20 minutes. It will depend upon the size of your shrimp. I would start with 15 minutes and then check it and keep adding 3-5 minutes on until the shrimp are completely cooked.

Recommended to serve with lemon wedges.
(TASTE IT FIRST! I tasted it and did not feel that it needed any more lemon seasoning.)

Serve with rice or pasta.

I served mine up with rice I made in the rice cooker (thanks dad! I never thought it would become such a handy appliance!) and served peas as a veggie to go with.