Adventures of the Spaghetti Squash

Here is my latest adventure!

Yesterday I attempted to make spaghetti squash. My sister had been introduced to it at a friend's house and SWORE it tasted exactly like pasta.

Just so you know, it does not.

I recently began a new job, so I decided to cook the squash in the crockpot since I haven't had much time to cook. I filled the crockpot up about halfway and put the squash in on high for about 5 hours. I suspect 4 hours would be plenty. Make sure to get a big knife and put a bunch of holes in the squash before you cook it, you don't want the squash to explode or something.

When the squash was done cooking, I cut it in half (watch out, it will be very hot!) and removed the seeds. Next, get a knife and scrape down the sides of the squash, vertically. This is supposed to make it look like spaghetti (mine did not, but if you have any tricks, let me know!).

After scraping the squash into a bowl, I combined it with some warm marinara and cooked sausage.

If you like squash, this is probably great! And very healthy! If, like me, you aren't a fan of vegetables, this won't be terrible, but I would not recommend it.
Here is the original recipe I looked at, in case you are curious. Happy cooking!

Burnt offering



I don’t know about you, but I am queen of late night snack cravings. One of those cravings happened to be peanut butter cookies. So, as usual, I googled “easy peanut butter cookies” and found one with only FOUR ingredients!



This is not what my cookies looked like!



However, the end product was a disaster. The cookies were burnt to a crisp! I put a second batch in for less time and found they were also burnt. So I recommend turning down the temperature of the oven quite a bit. And time your cookies vigorously. In fact, as a result of this event, my boyfriend bought me a little chicken cooking timer. Score!

Here is the recipe:

 

Easy peasy peanut butter cookies
1 c. peanut butter, smooth or crunchy
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla
1 c. sugar

Combine above ingredients. Drop by spoonful into lightly greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees (Try 275 to start!) until done (about 5-7 minutes).



Apples Galore

In honor of the first day of fall (and to use the abundance of apples from my family’s apple tree), I made apple crisp! I stuck with a good, old Betty Crocker Recipe.

As you would expect, I made a few substitutions! As suggested, I used 4 (larger than medium) apples. However, just as I was finishing preparing the recipe, I realized I was out of butter! So I looked up butter substitutions and found that honey and canola oil were suggested. So I did both. I also didn’t have any nutmeg (It’s on my grocery list!), so I added a bit of extra cinnamon. The apple crisp turned out very tasty, although it was slightly dry from the lack of butter. Here is the slightly modified recipe:


 

Extra Crumbly Apple Crisp

4 medium/large tart apples, sliced (4 cups)
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup quick-cooking or old-fashioned oats
1/3 cup butter or margarine, softened (or 2 T canola oil and 2 T honey)
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg (optional)

1.  Heat oven to 375ºF. Grease bottom and sides of 8-inch square pan with cooking spray
2. Spread apples in pan. In medium bowl, stir remaining ingredients until well mixed; sprinkle over apples.
3. Bake about 30 minutes or until topping is golden brown and apples are tender when pierced with a fork.

Serve warm with cream.

Better boxed cupcakes and canned frosting

A few weeks ago I embraced my (boyfriend’s) inner nerdiness in honor of his birthday. My tough guy is a secret lover of Pokemon! So when I saw these cupcakes on Pinterest, I couldn’t resist!

I started with just a plain chocolate cake mix. I don’t usually use boxed ingredients, I like to make my food from scratch, but I knew the frosting would take a significant amount of time and I was in a rush.

However, I did look up ways to improve chocolate cake mix.
Some of the ideas were:
1. Adding chocolate chips (I did this!)
2. Adding pudding (I did this!)
3. Adding 1 tsp cocoa
4. Replacing the water with milk or buttermilk

For a list of ideas for all types of cake, see this website The cupcakes were good, not super moist (but I did accidently leave them on the counter for a while.) I would recommend trying the water substitute to make it more creamy/moist.

Next, I needed white, red, and black frosting. I bought a cheap can of white frosting (again, I was in a rush) and then I mixed the colors myself. There are several ways to make black food coloring. One is to buy chocolate frosting and add blue food coloring. Another is to mix blue, yellow, and red food coloring to make a black frosting. I tried a combination of the two methods, adding cocoa to my vanilla frosting then, starting with blue, mixing the frosting with the food coloring. Although this didn’t form a solid black, the frosting did turn into a dark grey.
I put the red and black frosting in Ziplock bags and cut VERY small corners from the bag to form my own piping bag. When I tried to apply the frosting, the red and white was very rough, it didn’t look at all smooth like the original Pinterest post. So I Googled ways to smooth frosting and found a genius idea. I frosted the entire cupcake with the design, then put a dinner knife in boiling water, dried the knife, then smoothed it over the cupcake. This melts the frosting slightly, making it smooth and shiny! My boyfriend and his roommates loved the cupcakes! Here is the final result:

Football Sunday!

In honor of football Sunday, I am dedicating my first blog post to football-themed cuisine! A few weeks ago (for the first Packers game!) I scoured Pinterest for the best, easiest, and most creative food for the game. I eventually decided on a football-shaped pizza and football-shaped rice krispy treats! Football Pizza: I made two pizzas, one using Betty Crocker pizza crust mix (Approx. $1 from Walmart) and the other using a homemade mix I found here. Here is the pre-cooked result!

Here is how it went. I do not own a rolling pin, so instead I attempted to throw the dough (Italian pizzeria style). Therefore, the dough was thicker and did not cook as well as it should have. But honestly, it still tasted good so for now I will stick with my hand-tossed method. Rice Krispy treats: These were delicious! However, in the picture they look dark brown, but since they do not contain chocolate (which is what I was hoping for), they turn out very light. So I added a few teaspoons of cocoa, which made them chocolately peanuty goodness. I used plain white frosting to make the laces. Since I do not have any cake decorating materials, I put the frosting in a plastic bag and cut a small slit in the bag.

For more ideas for football-themed food or other holiday food, follow me on Pinterest!