Sunday, November 10, 2013

What NOT to do on a sugar detox

So I completed another round of a 21 day sugar detox right before Halloween. Being that tomorrow is Veteran's day, I wanted to bake something for our scheduled veterans coming into the office and may have gone a little overboard. I'm due to send a treat into EMX's work though so thankfully we won't be in a sugar coma.

So what is it all?

EMX emailed me a picture last week asking if I could duplicate a chocolate chip cookie with a smore inside. Duh. Challenge accepted.  I started with a double batch of my regular chocolate chip cookie dough.  If you want the secret family recipe,  you'll just have to Google the recipe because it's actually no secret. (Do you remember the episode of Friends where Pheobe realizes that her grandmother's cookie recipe was actually the recipe off the chocolate chip bag?)   I wasn't too keen on taking the time to make a million cookies originally so I decided to do a bar to start.  

I layered chocolate chip cookie dough on the bottom of a 9x9 pan.  Then did a layer of graham crackers,  followed by chocolate (some candy bar and some chocolate chips), mini marshmallows,  and then another "layer" of cookie dough.  I say "layer" in quotes because I enlisted R to help with this rather messy part and it didn't completely cover the marshmallows,  but we figured it would be just fine.

I threw that in the oven at 375 and started to assemble two large smore cookies.  Picture a layer of the cookie dough with a graham cracker,  more chocolate chips (because the chocolate bars were long gone), marshmallows, and then a topping of, you guessed it, more cookie dough. I was unsure of how long it would all take to bake, but monitored it all and the bars took about 35 minutes and the giant cookies took about 13 minutes. I was also worried about the middle of the cookies being too raw while the outsides became burnt but thankfully that didn't happen!

While we were waiting for the bars and giant cookies to bake,  I remembered something.  We have been so good lately about not buying packaged snack foods, except the occasional box of bunny crackers for the kids, but yesterday, we had a hankering for EMX's FAMOUS oreo cookie milkshakes. (The man can cook/make 4 things - pb&j, grilled cheese, pasta, and this milkshake.) Guess what we had left, just sitting there, oh so lonely in the pantry.  Oreos. Guess what happened next?

I set aside 3/4 of the dough left (about a single batch) for regular cookies and then mixed in oreo cookie pieces into the smaller portion of dough. Then we scooped out the remaining dough for baking.

I think EMX would have reproposed to me if the kids weren't hounding him for a bite of the oreo cookie. I'm not sure why it didn't occur to me before today to try that combination before!  The smores giant cookie and cookie bar also appear to be hits.

As EMX says after too much sugar, "I can see the future."

Who is ready for another sugar detox?

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

WFL - what's for lunch 11/6/13

I'm working from home today and made a quick tasty salad for lunch today. I'm sure you are just DYING to know what is in it!

Organic romaine lettuce
Cherry tomatoes
Celery
Salami
Provolone cheese
Banana peppers

All topped with olive oil and coconut vinegar with some salt and pepper.

Mmmmmm

Want to hear my 2 favorite things about working from home? 

1. The BRITA container is always full.

2.  I can listen to some background music. Not ashamed to admit right now I'm listening to Rockabye Baby TOOL. It's just enough background noise without the distraction of the real songs.