Devil's Food

There is nothing better than some homemade cookies.  I love making cookies from scratch, but today I used Pillsbury's Devil's Food Cake mix. You tweak the cake recipe slightly for cookies - more oil and eggs.  The cookies end up being extra soft and amazing.   A quick and simple staple for a cloudy Labor Day weekend. 

Before:

I added some shredded coconut to half the batch, too (love shredded coconut with chocolate....and basically anything). 

After:

Food porn.  Frosting and sprinkles made these delicious and picture perfect.  Happy Labor Day!

Pinot & Kale

It seems the eating and drinking from the bachelorette weekend has just continued on into my week.  My friend Leslie came over last night and brought a lovely Bearboat Pinot Noir from Sonoma.  She knows her wine and I highly recommend this Pinot - it's light, smooth, basically perfect...Lucky for me there was some left over.  Not one to let wine go bad, I've helped myself to a glass tonight.

Now on to the Kale part of my night...I feel like people have pretty strong and mixed opinions on this green stuff. I happen to love it in most forms: raw, steamed, liquid.  Kale chips I had yet to try and had heard they were delish and easy to make. So I went out, got myself a head of kale and decided to give them a try myself. One of my better ideas for a Tuesday.

Whenever I cook I like to do some recipe research. I usually check out a handful of recipes and then combine them while adding my own spin on things.  I decided to do kale chips 3 ways: plain sea salt, Sriracha, and Parmesan.  Sriracha and Parmesan happen to be my 2 favorite seasonings so I thought this worked out just perfectly.

Almost all of the recipes had these instructions in common: Preheat oven to 350, wash kale, de-stem (easier to just rip it off than cut it), cut up, and dry.  Toss with olive oil and sea salt. Bake for about 12 mins - until crispy with light brown edges. I estimated with the olive oil and seasoning and just went with taste.

Sea salt kale before the oven:

For the Parmesan version, I added the Parmesan to taste after I baked the chips and tossed them around.

Parmesan version:

I mixed the Sriarcha in before cooking and did taste testing before putting them in the oven.

Sriarcha version:

Kale chips are ridiculous.  It is crazy how crispy and amazing the kale gets.  When the first batch of sea salt came out I ate the entire thing in about 30 seconds. I am a huge fan of these things.  I don't even think I can decide which version was my favorite because each was delicious in their own way.  I will admit I found myself sprinkling a little Parmesan on each one by the end.  The best part is you can season these things a million ways, and I'm sure each would be just as good. They're healthy, too :)

As usual, I made way too much, so I think these will be the perfect, crunchy addition to my salad for lunch tomorrow, yum!

And that is what I call wining and dabbling. 

The Bachelorette breakdown

Greetings from the Charleston airport.  Turns out airports are great places to write your first blog post in a few weeks. An unlucky bird decided to fly into my plane so here I am delayed as usual.  

My older sister, Lea, is getting married in September and the bachelorette party was this week(end). We stayed outside of Charleston in the Wild Dunes Resort in Isle of Palms -- highly recommend this place for any type of vaca.  

Anyways, as expected this weekend included a ton of my fav things: my sisters, food, drink, beach, barre, and lots and lots of girl time. I actually had so much fun planning the trip and getting to know the area in the process.  Isle of Palms is so gorgeous, and Charleston is the cutest little city. I mean check out this door: 

Saturday night was our big night out in Charleston, and of course it all began with an authentic and heavenly southern meal at The Macintosh. Shout out to one of Lea's bridesmaids, Courtney, for organizing this with the restaurant. Check out this adorable menu: 

I literally cannot rave about the food enough.  Highlights were the gnocchi with BBQ rabbit- I wouldn't call myself a big rabbit eater but this was actually to die for. And... 

Grilled Deckle.  I thought this was a fish. I was wrong. It is the most tender cut of a ribeye and it is amazing.  A must try. 

Obviously I'm always a sucker for dessert.  The sweet corn ice cream on the side might have been the real winner on this.....I was generous enough to help finish everyone's for them #weddingdiet.  Pic necessary: 

There was a lot more food involved but the pics of us eating cake and shrimp at 3am just didn't seem as blog appropriate.  

Anyways, bachelorette weekends rock, Charleston rocks, and I will be buying myself a blueprint cleanse tomorrow (maybe I'll write a way less fun blog post on that). Happy Sunday Ya'll! 

Another addiction confession

So I'm also addicted to caffeine.  I'm not exactly sure why because caffeine doesn't even really affect me anymore. I can drink a venti coffee and fall asleep 20 mins later. Really Healthy, I know.

Conveniently there's a Starbucks literally in my office, and of course, the baristas know my name and order (there I go as simply, "Abby", cute).

There's probably a lot wrong with my daily (sometimes twice) Starbucks visits. First, it's expensive. Second, it can end up being a lot of cals and third, I should relax on the caffeine. 

For these reasons I really mixed things up today and ordered a GREEN TEA.  

 

People are always raving about the health benefits of green tea and it has some caffeine.

I don't think it will be replacing my daily coffee quite yet....one day at a time.  

Life changing discovery

I lovelovelove peanut butter and I don't know many people who would disagree here.  The other day in my neighborhood's new Fairway market I spotted a jar in the PB aisle advertising itself as "85% less fat than peanut butter", so obviously I was intrigued.

This beautiful thing I found was powdered peanut butter.  I was a little skeptical but of course had to give it a try. 

You just mix it up with some water (awesome because you can make it as thick/thin and you want).  AND 2 tbsps is only 45 cals!

I'm so excited for the literally endless possibilities with this lovely powder.  It's amazing on it's own but I think I will love it as a mix in for smoothies, yogurt (sounds weird but PB in yogurt is amazing), and baking. 

Tonight I mixed it with some raw cocao powder and made a healthy Nutella concoction (Don't even get me started on Nutella. addiction). Maybe this is the fix......doubtful. Check it: 

Cookie problems

Bakeries may be the most dangerous place on earth.  I'm fully convinced that I'm addicted to sugar.  Standing in William greenberg's right now and had to share this little picture of heaven.

Sidenote: tried cookies from Levain's bakery this weekend - wow. I could devote an entire blog to those.....stay tuned. 

Perfection