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-Mike and Kim

Ah Nuts!

Yeah, so I made some nuts.

Gorgonzola (without the Cheese) Ribeye Steak

Yeah, so we were able to score some cheap ribeye steaks from Ralphs, so we totally went for it! We found a recipe for Gorgonzola Ribeye Steaks and followed the recipe, but since we didn't happen to have any Gorgonzola cheese, we excluded it. The steak was pretty bland, so we just went ahead and added some Grizzly Joes and all was well with the world.

We pan seared the steak and then tossed it into the oven. The steaks were super thin, so we should probably not have cooked it for quite so long...

Almost Cream of Mushroom Soup

Snack girl to the rescue book

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream

For Desert tonight, I had Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream. I had to make it last night, as it needs some time to freeze. It is essentially cookie dough without the eggs with ice cream mixed it (we used vanilla ice cream instead of yogurt). The cookie dough, with all its butter and sugar is of course delicious, but overall this dessert is quite decadent and in any quantity a little overwhelming. If I could only figure out how to mix the dough into vanilla ice cream as little nuggets, instead of mixing the two together into one concoction, we would be hitting a grand slam!

http://tastykitchen.com/blog/2012/08/chocolate-chunk-cookie-dough-frozen-yogurt/

Breakfast Pizza

For breakfast this morning, Kim had me make a breakfast pizza. The composition of the pizza is actually rather simple, it has dough, eggs, bacon, and cheese (along with a few herbs for flavor composition).

The first thing that you have to do is to bake the bacon, the recipe called for three strips of bacon (or extra for snacking), so I naturally had to make 4!!! Then I rolled out the dough on my plastic sheet into a reasonable circle. Unfortunately, the dough did not successfully transfer to the cookie sheet, so I ended up having to re-roll it out. It did not shape as well the second time, so we had a slightly thicker and smaller base. In accordance with the instructions, I baked the pizza for 4 minutes to cook the dough and the Parmesan cheese. Once done, I pulled the pizza out and sprinkled the cheese on. We didn't have any more mozzarella cheese, so I used our normal Costco 3-cheese blend. I made little "nests" for the eggs to sit in. I apparently made the first one not big enough, so part of the egg whites tried to escape. I didn't make that mistake for the next two eggs. Tossed the pizza back in for another 4 and then 5 and then 3 minutes, and it was done!

I liked it, I thought it came out very well. And the bacon was delicious to eat while waiting for the pizza to cook. However, 1/4 of one of the bacon strips mysteriously disappeared.

Recipe:
http://www.thepeche.com/home/2011/1/24/bacon-and-egg-pizza-pie-via-the-big-sur-bakery-cookbook-pie.html

Zucchini Crisps

My mom had given me a zucchini.  When Bruce saw it, he mentioned how good zucchini crisps are.  I figured I would give it a try, since I'd seen recipes for them before and they looked decent.

I only made half the zucchini, since I figured that I would make minestrone with the rest.  After Mike tried the zucchini crisps, he said that he'd rather have more of these than the minestrone.

I looked at various websites before deciding to make the one from the Food Network website.  The reason I decided to make these Zucchini Crisps is because they are baked.  Other sites had similar recipes, but called for frying the crisps, and I don't like frying.

Needless to say, I will be using the other half of the zucchini to make more of these soon.

Tomato Basil Risotto

I love risotto.  I love all kinds of risotto.  It's probably my favorite dish.  However, it's not very healthy because most risotto dishes use heavy cream.  As a result, I try not to eat it too much.  It also is one of the more expensive dishes at a restaurant.

I found this Tomato and Basil Risotto recipe that doesn't use heavy cream.  It looked amazing in the picture, and I had all of the ingredients, so I figured why not.

It was amazingly delicious.  I would definitely make this again.  I didn't put any sugar in it since it said to put in just a pinch of sugar, and I figured that if it was too tart I could add that in at the end.

I also used canned, diced tomatoes instead of grated fresh tomatoes since I didn't have fresh tomatoes.

Chicken Divan

I found a recipe for Chicken Divan in the Comfort Food Makeovers book.  It basically looked like a chicken, broccoli and rice casserole.  It looked amazing and I knew I had to make it.

At first I thought the dish was OK, but when I ate the leftovers at another meal, I felt that the mustard/tang was too strong.  After that, I couldn't eat any more of it.

I also felt like the rice was a little too soft.  I like my rice a little hard.  The rice was first cooked in the Dutch Oven then baked in the oven, causing it to become too soggy, in my opinion.

I wouldn't make this dish again.

Before Heat:

After Heat:

Herb'd Chikin

BAM!