Make Salad in a Jar for an Easy Grab-and-Go Lunch That Stays Fresh for Days [Food]

Make Salad in a Jar for an Easy Grab-and-Go Lunch That Stays Fresh for Days [Food]:

Here's an ingenious way to make sure you eat salad everyday: Make jars of salad on Sunday night that you can just grab to bring to work. If you layer the ingredients correctly, the salad stays fresh for up to four days.

Julia writes on the Fat Girl Trapped in a Skinny Body blog that the most important part of the layering is keeping the dressing and the salad leaves from touching. She layers her ingredients with the dressing on the bottom, then onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, quinoa, and spinach. Naturally, you would adapt her salad recipe to your own tastes.

Adding to the convenience of this Secret Recipe Club recipe: When you're ready to eat your salad, just shake the jar up.

Comfort in Cookies

Comfort in Cookies:

I love having cookies around. Whether I need a little pick me up or just a quick sugar fix. Having cookies handy is comforting. And knowing I can have one and be good or eight and feel good, cookies equal comfort for me.

And chocolate cookies. well they just make it all even better.

Chocolate cookies with chocolate chips.

Uh huh. That’s the stuff.

I found these dark chocolate chips at the grocery store and had to use them right away.

I guess they’re new from Nestle. It’s about time they joined the party. I love dark chocolate.

Oh, I forgot. The cookies are kissed with peanut butter, too.

Yes. Yum.

Start out by creaming the butter, sugar and peanut butter.

Add the eggs and vanilla.

Beat it all together.

Add whisked cocoa, flour, baking soda and salt to the creamed mixture.

Then add in those dark chocolate chips and stir it all together. Oh yeah.

Take the cookie dough and roll into small balls roughly 1 1/4″ in size.

Place on parchment paper and bake away.

They’ll be on the smaller side, but they’ll bake up nice and thick.

And oh so good.

Help. Me.

If you’re a nut lover, you can also roll them in chopped pecans right before baking.

Just like so.

I baked some plain and some with pecans to play.

But, I like the plain ones better. Plain, slightly under baked and warm – right out of the oven.

Hard to resist. Basically, I like to torture myself. Then I can seek comfort with more cookies.

It’s probably good to be alone when you take them out of the oven. No one needs to see that behavior.

Just curious. Raise your hand if you’ve ever eaten an embarrassing amount of cookies before they can even cool.

Dark Chocolate Chip Comfort Cookies

1 1/2 cups flour

1/2 cup cocoa

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup butter, slightly softened

1 1/2 cups sugar

1/2 cup peanut butter

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

10 oz. dark chocolate chips

chopped pecans, optional

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.


• In a small bowl, mix flour, cocoa, soda and salt using a wire whisk and set aside.


• In another bowl, cream butter, sugar and peanut butter until light and fluffy.


• Add eggs and vanilla and mix until combined.


• Add flour mixture to creamed mixture and mix until combined.


• Stir in dark chocolate chips.


• Roll cookie dough into 1-1/4 inch balls. (If desired, roll balls in chopped pecans.)


• Place on parchment paper covered baking sheet.


• Bake 10 minutes.


• Place cookies on cookie rack to cool.


• Makes about 30 2-inch cookies.

baked pumpkin and sour cream puddings

baked pumpkin and sour cream puddings:

Sunday night, I emailed off 497 pages containing 80,392 words to my editor (846 photos had been sent over before the weekend), went to bed at 2 a.m., woke up at 6 a.m. and a few hours later came home to a completely empty apartment and two entire hours to myself — two hours to nap or just stare slack-jawed at the ceiling fan and think about nothing for a while — and decided instead that I’d had enough of this pumpkin-free November I’d been having and went back into the kitchen to make pudding. That’s normal right? That’s what normal people do, right? Wait, don’t tell me.

So, a manuscript has officially been delivered, a whole 6 hours in advance of its deadline. I am the eternal college student, apparently, though if you’d asked me 18 months ago when I was going to finish my book I could have probably told you right then “Five minutes before it is due.” I’m classy like that. I would hardly say that the cookbook process is finished — we’re still ironing out some kinks, there’s copyediting (I can’t be the only one who pities the copyeditor who must deal with the madness I pass off as grammar, right?), some reshoots, they’ve been kind enough to offer me design input though they’ll probably regret it when they see what bad taste I have… I won’t bore you with the details. But for the most part? I’m back! Whee! And there’s no place else I’d rather be.

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© smitten kitchen 2006-2011. |
permalink to baked pumpkin and sour cream puddings | 298 comments to date | see more: Fall, Gluten-Free, Photo, Pudding, Pumpkin, Thanksgiving

How to Turn Your Webcam Into a Streaming, Motion-Detecting Surveillance System [Video]

How to Turn Your Webcam Into a Streaming, Motion-Detecting Surveillance System [Video]:

You don't need expensive software or a new camera to keep an eye on things at home. Whether you're looking after your dog or trying to catch burglars in the act, you can put together a home security system with a regular webcam and your PC. More »

gingersnaps

gingersnaps:

And then, just like that, I decided not to work anymore. It’s weird, I finished my manuscript and I was raring to go — reshoots! edits! let’s talk design! — for about two days and then, almost out of curiosity, I closed the elaborate spreadsheet that owns me tracks all the recipes, photos, intros and progress in the manuscript, just to see if it could close, after being open for more than a year, and it did. And then, I didn’t reopen it. I pulled on my boots and wandered all over the city, eating roasted chestnuts from a street cart, buying glitter nail polish, delighting in the carpet of golden leaves underfoot and being fantastically schedule-free. So far today, I drank a latte — sitting down I might add, and not while rushing to the grocery store because I ran out of flour again — and I’m thinking about making some applesauce. Or trying again to convince my husband that we should paint the living room. Or maybe I’ll take a nap when the kid does? Clearly, I have some tough decision making ahead.

The good news is that being here doesn’t feel remotely like work; I am simply delighted to be back. And so, let’s talk about the gingersnaps that I also made just for the heck of it, just because I could, earlier this week. They’re thin and intensely spiced and quite snappy — buttery crisp at the perimeter, tentatively approaching tender and chewy towards the center, but not committing to it. I know that ginger junkies tend to like gingersnaps that are closer to ginger bombs, with grated fresh ginger and/or nuggets of candied ginger, but these (unless you make a couple tweaks, which I will attempt to suggest) are not that kind of snap. These are the kinds your grandmother might have made, as evidenced by the healthy helping of dark, funky and impossibly thick molasses.

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© smitten kitchen 2006-2011. |
permalink to gingersnaps | 152 comments to date | see more: Cookie, Fall, Photo

Robotic bear pillow stops your snoring by gently mauling your face (video)

Robotic bear pillow stops your snoring by gently mauling your face (video):

Looking to stop snoring? What you need is Jusui-Kun, a robot bear that paws your face while you're sleeping. Okay, it's more of a "gentle tickling," according to the bear's creators. The key is to get the snorer sleeping on the pillow to move his or her head from side to side. Jusui-Kun has a built-in mic to detect the sleeper's snoring, while an equally cuddly hand monitor detects blood oxygen levels, letting the bear know when to issue one of its loving face swipes. Video after the break.

Continue reading Robotic bear pillow stops your snoring by gently mauling your face (video)

Robotic bear pillow stops your snoring by gently mauling your face (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Nov 2011 07:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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