fresh veggie overload!

these past few days i've been subsisting off of quesadillas. all of the dairy's been making me feel kind of gross so i thought today i should have something more healthy.

i've had my eye on the pioneer woman's favorite salad for a while so i was pretty psyched to make it today. lots of chopping. i realized when i was making the dressing that i didn't have sesame oil. disappointment! so i harassed my brother over text messages to try to get him to bring me the sesame oil in his apartment. after bribing him with freshly baked cookies (i started to make chocolate chip cookies when i was waiting), he called me and told me he was on his way.

now my brother is a meat-and-potatoes type of person. he rarely eats vegatables but admits to popping a frozen pizza in the oven a few days a week. when he came over with the coveted sesame oil i offered him some salad and he really liked it. sweet success! little brother does like some vegetables!

Asian Noodle Salad
adapted from Jamie Oliver by the Pioneer Woman

SALAD INGREDIENTS:

1 package linguine noodles, cooked, rinsed, and cooled

1/2 to 1 head sliced Napa cabbage
1/2 to 1 head sliced purple cabbage
1/2 to 1 bag baby spinach
1 red bell pepper, sliced thin
1 yellow bell pepper, sliced thin
1 orange bell pepper, sliced thin
1 small bag bean sprouts
3 sliced scallions
3 peeled, sliced cucumbers
LOTS of chopped cilantro—up to one bunch

DRESSING:

Juice of 1 lime
8 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons sesame oil
6 tablespoons soy sauce
1/3 cup brown sugar
3 tablespoons fresh ginger, chopped
2 cloves chopped garlic
2 hot peppers or jalapenos, chopped
More chopped cilantro—LOTS

Mix together salad ingredients. Whisk together dressing ingredients and pour over salad. Mix with tongs or hands and serve on platter.
*Dressing keeps up to three days before serving, WITHOUT cilantro.


this made a LOT of salad. pretty yummy though! i'll be eating off of this for the rest of the week. i think it would be tasty with some fried tofu (my brother suggested chicken, haha).

also ugh, i hate the way the lighting in my kitchen is yellow and how i fail at fixing pictures on the computer. oh well. hopefully i'll get better at that.

ice cream sandwiches

i don't really like ice cream but ended up buying a pint of ben and jerry's peanut butter cup a few days ago when i just had to have a peanut butter cup milkshake. there's no way i'd eat the rest of the ice cream any time this year so i decided to use cookies from yesterday to make some ice cream sandwiches.

my first attempt was a scoop of semi-melted ice cream plopped onto a cookie with another one squished on top. that didn't really work because the peanut butter cups prevented me from being able to squish everything together evenly.

after some thought i spread some ice cream on a plate and used a round metal measuring cup to cut out a round of ice cream. (i would've used a circular cookie or biscuit cutter if i had one.) then i simply put it on a cookie and then set another one on top.

my only problem with this is the size. you almost have to be snake-like and dislocated your jaw in order to take a bite! i toyed with the idea of making an open faced sandwich but ultimately decided bigger is better.

chocolate chip cookies, take two

my mother gave me a gift card to williams sonoma for my birthday. yesterday i finally went there to spend it.

i ended up getting vanilla bean paste ($11)and a medium-sized stainless steel cog-and-ratchet scoop ($21)anyway, today i just had to bake cookies to try out the scoop and vanilla. this time around, the cookies were actually the right size instead of huge.

all ready to go into the oven! look at those vanilla flecks. look at that beautiful shape. yum!

after fourteen minutes of oven time, they were all ready.

i sampled one and that is a good cookie! i don't really remember what it tasted like the previous time i made them, but this is a damn good recipe. i believe last time it was a bit too doughy for my liking (well that's what happens when you make them twice the usual size), but this was amazing. crispy outside, soft and chewy inside. very rich.

here's the recipe, in case you missed it. i used half and half instead of milk and a generous amount of vanilla bean paste instead of extract. the recipe yielded exactly 12.5 dozen for me when i used a scoop, which i think is too cool.