Best #$%!&* Brownies in the World!

Deep Dish Brownies:

¾ cup butter or margarine (blech) melted

1 ½ cups sugar—organic is best tasting and a little crunchy!

1 ½ tsp. pure vanilla extract—not imitation!

3 eggs

¾ cups all purpose flour

½ cup cocoa powder

½ tsp. baking powder

½ tsp. salt

1 cup dark chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350°.

Grease 8x8 pan –important for DEEP DISH effect!

Combine flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt in a separate bowl.

In medium mixing bowl blend melted butter, sugar, and vanilla with electric mixer. Add eggs beating well with SPOON. Gradually add flour/cocoa mixture to egg mixture—slowly is best because if you add it too quick there will be tons of pockets of dry powder which will take you forever to smooth out. 

After well blended, add chocolate chips.

Spread into the prepared pan evenly. Bake 40-45 minutes or until brownies begin to pull away from the sides of the pan.

Cool completely, add some confectioner's sugar if desired, and cut into squares. Should make 16 brownies—don’t eat ‘em all yourself!!!!

Cod's Well That Ends Well

Autumn gets to be my guinea pig. She wasn't thrilled with the fish but ate an entire roll and a half cup of edamame!

My husband and I went grocery shopping together as we only had 1 child with us. I am sick of eating chicken, cow, pork, or turkey.

We walked past the seafood section and I stopped in my tracks. I forgot about fish!

"Kris, what do you think about Cod? Want to try it?"

Kris shrugs his shoulders. The man behind the fish counter laughs and pulls out a pound of Cod and I then proceed to interrogate him on how to cook it, how do you know when its done? What do you eat with it?

"Its basically like Haddock." he says. Yeah and THAT helps. I pretend I know what he is talking about and when I get home I Google "How to bake Cod".

The recipe that came up that was the closest match to the 5 year old spice collection I have is here. It was delicious and I highly recommend it. If I can do it, you can do it!

Now, the problem is that it calls for both lemon and lime juices. I had seen a bottle of lime juice in my fridge earlier that day. You know, the kind that is cleverly shaped like a lime but is the color of NOTHING nature would ever be capable of producing? I assumed it must be fresh. We all know what assume means.

It also called for Cracked Red Pepper which I miraculously pulled out of the spice rack (that doesn't go bad right?) and Kosher salt. Why does my salt need to be blessed by a Rabbi??? I of course had none so I sent Kris to the DG to see if he could find that and the Onion Salt that I threw out during the last cupboard cleaning.

He came back with Sea Salt (close enough right??) and Onion Powder, which the recipe said you can also use instead of Onion Salt. Kris greased the ceramic baking dish (I had no idea we had one of those) with butter and plopped the fish down in it. I mixed the ingredients together in a bowl and when I got to the lime juice I happened to glance at the bottom of the container. "April 2008" it quietly stated. Crap. Then I look at the recipe and it calls for a clove of garlic, freshly chopped. I figured there must be some garlic left over from the last time I cooked a few weeks ago so I searched the fridge door but to no avail. CRAP. And apparently we do not own any Garlic powder or salt.

Kris brought several odd spice jars to our relationship when he moved in here. There's lots of Mediterranean spices, Greek, and Indian. I usually skim past those when I'm searching for the Cinnamon Sugar. He pulled out the Greek spice mixture and proclaimed that it had BOTH Onion Salt AND Garlic Salt with the added bonus of.....peppermint?? Hoo boy how was that going to taste? Sounded nauseating. I used it anyway. What choice did I have??

We did not mix in the cat food or the Prego, just so ya know ;)

I poured this interesting liquid over the fish. It was quite thick surprisingly, and me being a closet perfectionist had to take a spoon and cover every part of Cod that was showing!

It actually smelled pretty good! We cooked it for 25 minutes at 400 degrees. Seemed excessive to me for fish but I'm not the expert.

It came out PERFECT nice and flaky and tasted heavenly. We served it to ourselves with Wild Mushroom Pilaf and shelled Edamame (I LOVE STEAMBAGS).

Cleanup of the ceramic dish was a snap also. It is important to me to know how long I will need to let something soak before the crud that I usually burn onto it comes off. In this case it slid right off, probably due to Kris' butter coating!

Kris enjoying MY cooking hehehe

I also slept like a baby last night. Not sure if its related, but I thought I would throw that in! ;)

Best Bleepin' Brownies in the World

Every time that I have to bake something for a pot luck I usually go to one of two standards: Chocolate Chip Cookies made with butter flavored shortening (you may cringe but damn its tasty) or a recipe for brownies that my friend Marie gave me that she got from a lady who worked at the same dentist office she did. No, these are not sugar free LOL not by any means. But they ARE tasty as heck and bound to be a hit at any party.

The only problem is that they are DEEP DISH so must be made in either an 8x8 or 9x9 pan (unless you want to double the recipe and then I suppose a 13x9 would work...)

First, the recipe:

3/4 cups all purpose flour

1/2 cup cocoa powder

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup of MELTED butter

1.5 cups of sugar--Organic "Sugar in the Raw" is the best tasting and makes it a little crunchy!

1.5 tsp pure vanilla extract--not imitation though!!!

3 eggs

1 cup DARK chocolate chips (I prefer Ghirardelli or Hershey's Special Dark)

Prep:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease 8x8 or 9x9 pan -- important for DEEP DISH effect!

COMBINE in separate bowl:

Flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.

COMBINE in mixing bowl:

MELTED butter, sugar, and vanilla. Use an ELECTRIC MIXER to blend these. Add eggs to this mixture and beat well with a SPOON. Next, gradually add flour mixture to this. Do it VERY SLOWLY, about 1/4 cup at a time and use the SPOON to combine. Its best to do it slowly because I have found that doing it too quickly allows for clumps and it takes forever to go through and break them up to make it smooth. And you want it smooth, trust.

After well blended go ahead and add the chocolate chips.

Spread into the prepared pan evenly. Bake for 40-45 minutes or until brownies begin to pull away from the sides of the pan.

Cool completely and cut into squares. Should make about 16 brownies. Don't eat 'em all yourself ;)

Redneck Pasta Salad--Pot Luck Idea

I'm super lazy and would usually just buy something like this at the store but they never have what I really want in a pasta salad. SO I decided to make my own! Well, Kris cooked the pasta and drained it and put in the oil but I threw in all the other junk :D

1 box of Pasta (I used regular Macaroni)

1 large can of sliced black olives

1 bag of Turkey Pepperoni Minis

1 brick of Monterey Jack cheese, diced (or whatever cheese you like)

1 1/2 bottles of Italian dressing

Olive Oil

Cook pasta, drain. Add Olive Oil, about 2 tablespoons or so, and stir. This will keep the pasta from sticking together. Put in fridge and chill until cold to touch. Add Italian dressing, stir. Add olives, pepperoni, and cheese. Heck you can put whatever you want in this concoction! I just used the things that I know I like. I hate mayonnaise and I'm always wishing something had pepperoni, black olives, and/or cheese in it when I go to a barbecue! Serve and Enjoy!

Serves about 10-12 people, depending on how much they eat ;)

Well...duh.

Me, now

Pre-third kid

For the last few months I have been kind of not caring about my baby weight, yet at the same time beating myself up inside every time I stepped on the scale. As some of my long term friends may remember I used to be very thin and in fairly good tone. A sedentary job, a miscarriage at 11 weeks, and then a successful pregnancy later I am not what I used to be either mentally or physically. This is good in some ways, but also sad in others. I'm OK with not being a size 2 anymore. But I'm not OK with only losing 15 of the 50 lb left to lose after the baby was born EIGHT MONTHS AGO. I expected to hold on to maybe 10 or 15 lb but not 35.

Today I got onto the scale. Ugh. I try to only do it once every couple of weeks so I don't get too depressed...ignorance being bliss in this case. Again my weight has not budged since March. I take my measurements once a month also because I am insane. Oh and my body fat percentage too. Did I mention I used to work in a gym? Yeah I got a little obsessive. I'm only slightly obsessive now. Plus way lazier.

I decided to stop blindly eating whatever I want and take stock in what I am doing to myself. I got out the measuring cups, the scale (the food scale, not the meanie scale) and went to the Daily Plate to find out exactly why I am not losing any weight despite breastfeeding like mad (500+ calories burned daily supposedly) and walking 3-4 days a week for an hour at a time.

This is where the "Well, duh" comes in.

My breakfast has for many years consisted of Maypo (if you haven't tried it...you are really missing out) which is high in vitamins, iron, and both kinds of fiber. A serving of Maypo has 180 calories. Not bad for a breakfast food. BUT in true Betsy fashion I can't just eat it plain. Even though its Maple flavored I still need more. SO I dump in chocolate chips. I used to use a 1/3 cup to measure. Hell I used to use my fists to measure but I figured I should tone down. After Autumn was born I started to cut down even more and used a 1/4 cup measure (heaping of course). Chocolate chips have 70 calories in 30 pieces. That's about 2-ish calories each. A 1/4 cup has about 164 calories. I know this because I counted them out individually and did MATH EEEEEEEW!!!! I also add about 1/4 cup of whatever percentage milk we have in the fridge to cool it down and make it extra yummy. So my breakfast is about 400 calories. Not great but its filling and I am not usually hungry until noon.

BUT I am also a daily cup a day coffee addict. And no, I don't drink that black. I like my coffee like I like my Maypo: Full of SUGAR!!! I just blindly dump in flavored creamer (Dulce de Leche mmmmmm) until it reaches the danger spill over zone. 1 tablespoon=35 calories. I figure that I must be dumping in what, 3 tablespoons? WRONG. I measured (using water) how much I am actually using. By my calculations (I wrote it out on paper and proved my work!) I am adding 220 calories to my 4 calorie coffee!! SIX tablespoons!!! SOOOO my breakfast in total is over 600 calories. How many of you out there take creamer with YOUR coffee? I'm going to keep my tablespoon measure next to the coffee pot from now on.

Just this small bit of measuring really opened my eyes to what is wrong with my diet and how my perception of serving size is way off. I really think that they should teach more in school about things like what a tablespoon, a cup, a gram, and an ounce look like. Obesity is now epidemic in several parts of the world, and I think we need Food Education just as badly as we need Sex Education. And also, just as we as parents should be talking to our kids about the birds and the bees we should be talking to them (and demonstrating) about the chips and the fries.