teacher by day - chef by night
HAPPY FALL! I know that fall technically started a few days ago, but I have been wanting to make some delicious (natural) flavored creamer for a while. So today, in honor of National Coffee Day, I share with you a super easy homemade (fall) creamer …
We are still getting corn from our awesome local farm’s CSA. All year we seem to have been getting between one and dozen ears of corn a week. Much of this corn I have been sharing with my neighbors and my parents. Much of the …
We like things spicy around here. So last year when Rich decided that he wanted to grow habaneros, I supported him. Well, who knew that two little plants would produce so many peppers. I think that all year we used about 25 habaneros (and that is including recipes which used lots of them, like hot sauce, infusing vodka, and pepper flakes). I don’t know how people stand spicier peppers. So, long story short: we basically swore off super spicy peppers and decided to stick with the perfect pepper instead: Jalapenos.
A Jalapeno Pepper is just spicy enough. You get plenty of kick, but not too bad that you will burn your nose just chopping them or ruin a dinner by adding it to dinner! We still have more Jalapenos than we really can use without adding them to everything I cook (so the friends who I am sharing with aren’t complaining)!
One of the most popular jalapeno dishes around here has been Jalapeno Poppers. Now these are not your unhealthy deep-fried poppers, no – these are pretty healthy (low fat cream cheese & cheese, if you want to think “healthy” it is actually a well balanced snack: you have your dairy and your vegetable)! Even my mom and Rich’s mom, who both do not like super-spicy foods, enjoyed these. As Rich said “you need to add the heat [from baking them] to take away the heat [spicy-ness]”.
I love to teach, I love to cook, I love to read. So here I present to you all of those things that I love, wrapped up in one neat little Pizza (which happens to also be the favorite of the man that I love!). …
I am not quite sure how I have waited this long to post this AMAZING Dip (or how I have not managed to take a better photo any of the times I have made this, sorry)!! Do you like Ranch? Do you like foods with …
When Life gives you Zucchini, you make Zucchini Bread. And when you are lucky enough to get some Peaches from Life at the same time that Life gives you Zucchinis, you can make Peach Zucchini Bread!
All of the “fats” in this recipe come from the Peaches (or Bananas – or a mix of both). Since the fruits have all of the natural sugars, I even went ahead and reduced the amount of sugar in the recipe! AND – if you want to make this even more healthy, do like I did and replace your white flour with whole wheat flour.
I’ve now made this bread five times, in 4 different ways (loaf, mini-muffins, mini-loafs, and bunt cake) for dozens of people. I think I liked the way it turned out in the traditional loaf the best – but each was amazing. I have added diced peaches on top (in the mini-loafs) and that was adorable. Rich liked the mini-muffins best (which I thought were more dry because I baked them almost too long – but that is why he liked them the best). This recipe is totally forgiving and you can add or substitute as you like and feel free to bake longer if you like a drier bread – you seriously cannot mess up this recipe (ok, I take that back – you probably can mess it up, but its not easy to do)!
