Sweet and Spicy Steak Marinade

This recipe is mine and Tom's own creation. We originally made it for chicken drumsticks, but we would much rather try it on steak. Chicken just doesn't soak up marinade like steak does. It was good on the chicken, but the best was when we tasted the sauce right after we made it. The chicken lost a lot of the flavor. Still a good marinade to use on anything really, I'm just suggesting steak to get the full effect.

2/3 cup BBQ sauce (we like Sweet Baby Ray's)
1 chipotle pepper in adobo sauce
2 beers
1 onion, chopped
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 tbsp honey
1 tsp vinegar (we used white wine vinegar)
1 lime, juiced
1 clove garlic, minced

In a small bowl, crush the chipotle pepper with the back of a spoon until it is somewhat of a paste. Then, in a large bowl, combine all ingredients and stir until mixed. Then place the steak (or meat of choice) in the bowl and let soak for a few hours before cooking.

This is the perfect blend of spicy and sweet to make your taste buds go crazy!

Acorn Squash with Brown Sugar and Bacon

This autumn day is probably one of the final weekend days of the year where it was in the 60s, perfect in my mind for a final grilling. Today Tom and I decided to combine seasonal foods with summer-style cooking. First up was this incredible recipe I found here for acorn squash. I love acorn squash. I need to find more recipes using it. I guess I never really thought about it before, but I really do love fall produce.

Anyway, enough of my rambling. Here's the recipe. I wish I could have gotten a better picture; acorn squash is such an interesting vegetable to look at. But I forgot my camera. This is why I'm getting a little digital camera for Christmas, right? (hint hint)

I apologize for the quality of this photo, this is from a camera phone.

1 acorn squash

2 slices of bacon

1 1/2 tbsp butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

salt and pepper to taste

makes 2 servings

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with tin foil. Halve the acorn squash and scoop out the seeds. (You can salt and cook the seeds along with your squash, that's what we did!) Poke holes in the inside so that the flavor can soak in as much as possible. Melt some of the butter and paint the skin side with it. Add the rest of the butter to the scooped out part of the squash. Place the halves on the baking sheet, and add 1/4 cup of brown sugar and top with a slice of bacon on each side. Bake for 40 minutes. We then threw it on the grill to get the bacon crispy, but you can obviously skip this step. Just cook it until the yellow part is relatively soft. 

If you're health conscious you can always skip the bacon. Then you'd just have a sweet side. This also makes a great appetizer. Or, if you make a whole squash for yourself you can have it as a meal. 

My only problem with this recipe was how to eat it. I wish that recipe instructions also gave eating instructions sometimes. I wasn't sure if I should just chop it up and eat the bacon last, scoop out the inside, or what. I ended up just scooping out the yellow part and forgetting about the skin (though you can definitely eat that too!) and then eating the bacon by itself. The bacon had a nice sweet flavor to it, and the squash was very 

yummy! I totally suggest considering this if you are trying to plan Thanksgiving sides. 

Simple Peanut Butter Cookies

This Paula Deen recipe I found on the Food Network website is awesome because it has so few ingredients; great in a pinch. Being a Paula Deen recipe I expected it to have 3 sticks of butter and about a pound of sugar. This is not the case. In fact, there's no butter at all. Like I said, super convenient. 

1 egg

1 cup creamy peanut butter

1 cup sugar

1 tsp flour

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Combine ingredients in a mixer until batter is smooth. Shape the dough into balls about the size of golf balls in your hands and place on a cookie sheet. Press them flat with a fork. (Not sure what the use of these fork marks are, but it sure looks pretty!) Bake for about 10 minutes. 

Although this isn't a very fancy recipe, it gets the job done. Definitely not my dad's peanut butter cookies, but still good. I think they would have been better if I didn't burn the bottom, a common problem I've noticed in peanut butter cookies. My only tip would be to take them out of the oven sooner than  you would think. I waited until the edges of mine became golden-brown, but then the bottoms were almost black.

The original recipe calls for Hershey's Kisses, but obviously I did not have any of those on hand. (If I had any they would probably have been gone the day I bought them.) Of course this would be an amazing addition, especially because any peanut butter/chocolate combination is incredible. Enjoy!

Balsamic Orange Chicken

I apologize that nothing new has been posted in a while. A week ago I ate some bad Subway, which caused me only to be able to eat plain pasta for a few days while my stomach recovered. (Funny story, Subway was calling my frantically after I sent them an email informing them that their food had made me sick...they believed that I was suing them!) As I was recovering from the stomach thing, a cold hit me hard and I was in and out of commission for the week. But when I finally began to feel better, I went over Tom's and we cooked a really simple and really yummy dinner. I believe we found the recipe in his mom's Everyday Food: Great Food Fast magazine, but we modified it a lot.

1 1/2 lb chicken thighs

1 whole orange, sliced

2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

olive oil 

the spices we added without measuring:

chili powder

red pepper flakes

brown sugar

salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Heat oil in a pan over medium heat. After rubbing all desired spices on the chicken thighs, place them on the pan and cook until the cooked side is brown, about 5 minutes. (If you are using chicken thighs with bones and skin, cook them skin side down. Also, depending on whether or not your chicken has bone will affect the speed at which it cooks. Boneless will cook faster.) Transfer the chicken to a bake pan and put in the over for about 5 more minutes, until the chicken has cooked all the way through. Meanwhile, add the balsamic vinegar and orange to the original pan, scraping the bottom of the pan for crusty leftovers and mix together. Cook until the oranges begin to soften. Then return the chicken to the pan, and stir the sauce with the chicken until spread even.    

I'd just like to say, I love chicken thighs. They are my favorite part of a chicken. I feel like chicken thighs aren't really advertised that much, but the meat is always so soft! The reason I really wanted to try this recipe is that I remember my dad cooking chicken thighs on the grill when I was a kid and absolutely loving them, and this was a time in my life where it was difficult to get me to eat anything, let alone meat. I was surprised that with so few ingredients how well the recipe came out. I squeezed my oranges onto my chicken because I didn't think the orange flavor got into the sauce that well. Also, don't be shy on the spices, because without them this recipe is relatively bland. A lot of the balsamic taste gets cooked away. Hope you enjoy!

Article on Microwave Food

The UMass newspaper, The Collegian, put a blog post up with 3 great recipes that are super easy and you only need a microwave to cook. I wish there had been an article like this when I lived in the dorms.

Click here to view it.

Another reason why I haven't been blogging as much is because I'm a part of the Collegian writing staff now. I've haven't published a ton of articles yet because I'm so busy, but I'm doing the best I can. Here's a link to what I've done in case any of you are interested. I was blessed with the opportunity to see a concert for free for my very first article. Grace Potter & the Nocturnals are amazing! (Someday I'll figure out how to embed YouTube videos.)

Sautéed Butternut Squash

Rather than writing the essay I should be, I'm going to share with everyone my creation of the weekend. Butternut squash is in season, which means it's nice and cheap (79 cents a lb for local grown!) and also best-quality. 

I originally began searching for butternut squash soup recipes, but all of them were encouraging use of a blender which I do not have. Instead I used some of the ingredients from a recipe I could barely recall and couldn't find and basically just created my own recipe. This is what I did:

1/2 large butternut squash

1/3 cup diced carrots (I used baby carrots, yum!)

1/4 cup chopped onion

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/8 cup butter

dash of cinnamon 

oil

Heat a large skillet over medium heat and melt the butter. Add the squash, carrots and onion to the pan. Add oil as necessary. Stir occasionally. Add brown sugar and cinnamon (I used more than a dash and regret that mistake). Simmer in covered skillet on medium-low heat until the squash is soft (about 20 minutes). 

Great on a chilly fall day!

Something Has Changed

Some of you may wonder where my eye-catching blog title went. Due to a lot of consideration and tips from others, I've decided to take out the profanity. I know, I know, this is college, right?! You're supposed to swear and do all those other things your parents won't let you do. But this blog is viewed by other people too. I don't want to prevent moms with small children from looking at my blog because they don't want to have to deal with, "Mommy, what does THAT word mean?" (And for any newcomers who may be stumbling upon this blog, the word I'm talking about rhymes with quit.)

My dad has seen my blog but told me what prevented him from sending it to all of his co-workers was the profanity. I don't want one word in the title causing me to lose a huge possible audience. Maybe I'm a little vain, but it would be nice to get a little blogger fame someday. I also learned that future employers may not enjoy it, and if I'm getting employed for being a writer someday then what better to show them than this blog! It got me the gig at the UMass newspaper, after all.

I know, it's a sad day. I'm sure you couldn't help but smile a little every time you thought of my blog title, I know that's how I felt. Plus, I'm the blogger, I'm rather attached at this point. But, all things must change. This may be only temporary. If anyone has a suggestion for a more catchy title, please let me know! I'm open to suggestions. Also, hate mail about the title change is welcomed as well.