Greek Cooking Class

Another successful date night!

September’s date night took us to Whole Foods, but not for grocery shopping… 

We were there for a Greek cooking class that featured a three-course dinner with appetizers to boot!

The class was only $10 a person. Who says a fun and delicious date night has to cost mucho dinero?

Ryan and I arrived and took our seats at a long table with the other class participants and were immediately served a glass of wine.

 

I love a good glass of white wine! I much prefer white wine to red because I like my wine to taste like juice and  that’s harder to come by when enjoying red wines.

Once everyone was happily sipping on their glasses of wine, the class began.

It started out on an interactive note with some hummus-making!

The homemade hummus contained chickpeas, garlic, lemon juice and tahini (sesame seed paste).

Guess who was our table’s designated chickpea crusher?

That is Ryan’s “I’m really into this chickpea crushing business” face. 

As he crushed away, I couldn’t help but quip “a food processor would be pretty great right about now.” The instructor said that a food processor would take all of the fun out of the hummus making process.

False.

It would take all of the lumps out of the hummus-making process. 😉

Once Ryan was done making the hummus, we enjoyed it spread on fresh pita bread.

Ryan and I thought the hummus was okay… but in some serious need of seasonings. Sue recommended adding roasted red peppers if we recreate the hummus at home which I think we would really enjoy. I think this less flavorful hummus would be delicious on a sandwich, but when enjoyed on a pita alone, it was a bit bland.

Luckily the other appetizer was very flavorful.

Grape leaves stuffed with rice and seasonings. So good! I had three while Sue prepared our salads with another Whole Foods team member.

It’s rare that I will say a salad is the best part of any meal, but in this particular situation it really was!

The salads were comprised of a very unusual combination of foods:

• Watermelon
• Olive
• Endive
• Feta cheese
• Mint
• Olive oil
• Balsamic vinegar

We were all a little skeptical about how the flavors would taste together, but they were unbelievably delicious! My favorite bites were the ones with the watermelon, feta and mint. YUM.

We basically licked our salad plates clean.

Then it was time for the main course.

Chicken gyros were served with pita bread, cucumbers, tomato, balsamic vinegar, olive oil and a yogurt-based sauce known as raita sauce.

My favorite part of this dish was definitely the raita sauce. It was cool and creamy and I cannot wait to try to recreate it at home.

Dessert was also delicious.

We were served plates of stracciatella gelato, which is essentially an Italian sweet cream flavor of gelato with chocolate shavings. It was topped with mint leaves and orange blossom honey (so good!) and served with watermelon, cantaloupe and sliced, frozen grapes.

Ryan and I finished our respective desserts very quickly and were able to share a second scoop of the stracciatella.

Clearly the gelato sparked our sweet tooth, because once the class was over we headed to Whole Foods’ bakery and nabbed some chocolatey goodies.

I am seriously in love with Whole Foods’ bakery. Their oatmeal chocolate chip cookie is unreal. I could eat those bad boys all day every day. Ryan shares my love of these cookies and we spilt a big one between the two of us (it looks small in that bag, but it was the size of my hand).

I also nabbed a chocolate twist from the bakery which I planned to save for tomorrow.

It didn’t make it out of the parking lot. 😉

Good food + Good company = Great date night

The rest of our evening will be spent cuddled up on the couch with the dawg. My kinda night!

See ya in the mornin’, friends!

Giant Oatmeal Cookies

When I made Jenna’s chocolate chip cookies a couple of weeks ago, I realized one very important thing.

I like my cookies BIG.

I don’t particularly enjoy the fact that most cookies are the size of a silver dollar. (Whatever happened to silver dollars?)  When it comes to normal cookies, I inevitably eat five… plus some dough.

With giant cookies I can typically limit myself to one (okay two). They’re typically thicker and more moist than smaller cookies which makes this girl quite happy.

This evening I felt like baking and got to work in the kitchen after Googling a recipe for GIANT oatmeal cookies.

How good is oatmeal cookie dough? 

Giant Oatmeal Drop Cookies (Recipe from Cooking Light)

Ingredients:

1 cup packed dark brown sugar
2 tablespoons butter or stick margarine, softened
1/2 cup applesauce
1 large egg
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups regular oats
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Cooking spray

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Beat sugar and butter at medium speed of a mixer until well-blended (about 5 minutes). Add applesauce and egg; beat well. Lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Combine flour, oats, soda, cinnamon, and salt. Add flour mixture to sugar mixture; beat at low speed until well-blended. Stir in raisins, walnuts, and vanilla. Using 3 level tablespoons per cookie, drop dough 2 inches apart onto baking sheets coated with cooking spray; flatten slightly. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes. Remove cookies from pans; cool on wire racks.
Yield: 15 cookies

Apparently I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t resist the dough. 

Dead duck sighting… 😉

The recipe I followed instructed me to make each cookie using three tablespoons of cookie dough.

The result?

Some VERY big cookies and a VERY happy girl.

 

Each cookie was bigger than my palm. This, my friends, is a very good thing.

In all the cookie madness I didn’t snap a picture of my dinner. Ryan and I had ravioli, in case you were curious.

The cookies were better. 😉

Protein Oatmeal Cookie Bites

Ryan had to work late this evening, so I wanted to surprise him with one of his favorite meals.

BBQ meatloaf!

(Side note: I loved looking back at the post where I made this recipe for the first time last year, on the night when we put our Christmas tree up! Hooray for the holidays!)

This meatloaf is really easy to make and the BBQ sauce makes it extra moist and flavorful.

 

Along with the meatloaf, we enjoyed broccoli and grape tomatoes for some added nutrition.

Ryan was quite the happy camper when he arrived home and smelled this cookin’ away in the oven!

We both gobbled down our meals rather quickly. 😀

Protein Oatmeal Cookie Bites

While the meatloaf was cooking, I did some experimenting in the kitchen. I was in the mood to bake, but didn’t want bake goods chillin’ around out house since I’ve been known to polish off batch of cookies on my own in a week one day.

I decided to try my hands at creating a protein cookie and the result was pretty darn good!

Disclaimer: I would never say that these cookies are as good as full-fat, sugar-laden cookies, but for what they are (chock full of protein and whole grains), they’re pretty tasty!

To quote Ryan, “I’d eat ‘em again.” 😉

Ingredients

• 1 c. oats
• 1/2 c. flavored protein powder (I used All the Whey chocolate peanut butter cup)
• 1/2 c. fat-free cottage cheese
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tbsp. ground flax seeds
• 1/4 c. water

(Note: You may substitute one egg for the ground flax seeds and water)

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix all ingredients together using a mixer. Place round spoonfuls of dough on a cookie sheet sprayed with non-stick cooking spray. Bake for approximately 10 minutes.

Enjoy!

Cookie Sunday

I know Tina is a big advocate of Cookie Friday, but in mi casa, today is definitely Cookie Sunday!

I’m in a bakin’ kinda mood. 😀

My kitchen bake-fest started with oatmeal almond chocolate chip cookies.

Rather than use plain roasted almonds in the cookies, I stirred in chopped Emerald cocoa roast almonds for an extra punch of chocolate.

Chopped Emerald Cocoa Roast Almonds

I mean, let’s be honest, who doesn’t need a little more chocolate in their life? 😉

Ready for the Oven

The cookies didn’t flatten out like I hoped they would, but they were still tasty and that’s what really matters, right?

Oatmeal Almond Chocolate Chip Cookies

I ❤ Full Cookies

Naturally I had to have one (and by one, I mean three) right out of the oven.

Ooey Gooey Chocolate Chips

Round Two

The second round of cookies I made were super easy!

At dinner last night, I told Tina about Funfetti cake mix cookies that you can make using a box of Funfetti cake mix and altering the amount of oil, eggs and water. Apparently she and her husband share my intense love for Funfetti cake!

Though I didn’t have any Funfetti cake mix on had (Blasphemy!), I opted to make cake mix cookies using a box of spice cake mix.

The beauty of cake mix cookies is that you can make them using any flavor of cake mix!

Spice Cake Mix Cookies

Before putting the cookies into the oven to bake, I topped them with a sprinkle of sugar to make them appear more “professional,” and therefore look like they’re much harder to make than they really are. The secrets of PBF… 😉

The cookies turned out moist and very tasty.

You can bet your sweet behind I had a couple of these fresh from the oven, too.

The Cookie Monster Strikes Again

Lunch, what lunch???

Odd little fact: Sadie loves spice cake cookies.

"Gimme the Cookie!"

Nom, Nom, Nom

Sunday Plans

Yesterday Ryan and I drove 45 minutes to pick up a full-size mattress and box spring set from a guy advertising the combo on craigslist for our spare bedroom. Unfortunately we brought it home only to realize it was an extra-long full. Not fun.

Today we’re heading out to pick up an actual full-size mattress. We made sure to ask for the measurements this time. 😉

After mattress and box spring fun, I’m cooking dinner to bring to a friend’s house tonight! Sunday night meatloaf, here I come!

Recipes

Oatmeal Almond Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

• 1/2 c. packed brown sugar
• 1/4 c. sugar
• 6 tbsp. butter, softened
• 1 egg
• 1/8 c. water
• 1/4 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp. almond extract
• 1 3/4 c. old fashioned oats
• 1/2 c. flour
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 c. chopped cocoa roast almonds
• 1/2 c. chocolate chips

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Beat sugars, butter, water, egg and extracts until creamy. Combine oats, flour and baking soda and add to the creamy sugar mixture. Stir in almonds and chocolate chips. Drop by small spoonfuls on a baking sheet sprayed with cooking spray. Bake for 10 – 12 minutes.

Cake Mix Cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 box cake mix
• 1/4 c. water
• 1/4 c. oil
• 1 egg

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine all ingredients and drop by spoonful on a baking sheet sprayed with cooking spray. Bake for approximately 10 minutes.

Homemade Cookies and a Pizza Buffet

I love days at home! The yummy kitchen smells, fun-loving jabs and warm, cozy feeling of being around family is the best.

I also got to enjoy one of my favorite snacks, thanks to a quick trip my mom took to the grocery store for Honeycrisp apples!

Apples and Peanut Butter

An oldie but a goodie.

Dinner was a “clean out the freezer” dinner since we’re off to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in the morning to spend the holiday with my grandmothers, aunts, uncles and cousins.

We had a pizza buffet featuring a Kashi Caribbean Carnival pizza and a tuscan chicken pizza.

Kashi Caribbean Pizza

Tuscan Chicken Pizza

I definitely preferred the Tuscan chicken pizza. I like my pizza to taste like pizza and the Kashi Caribbean pizza was a little too exotic for me.

Dessert

While grocery shopping last week, Ryan and I noticed the Christmas cookie dough on display and I asked him what his favorite kind of cookie dough was. He said oatmeal raisin and I think I’d have to agree. The mix of the oats, cinnamon and sugary dough is heaven.

Tonight I made homemade oatmeal raisin cookies using the traditional recipe found on the inside lid of Quaker oatmeal.

Traditional Recipe

Dough!

I made half of the recipe (and used whole wheat flour in place of white… healthy, right? 😉 ). We were supposed to have 24 cookies, but somehow with a house of five people, only 12 actually made it into the oven.

This house is filled with cookie dough monsters.

The 12 Survivors

Surprisingly I didn’t even eat a cookie! I think I was overloaded on dough.

Now we’re all hangin’ out, watching So You Think You Can Dance and packing up for our early flight tomorrow. We’re leaving for the airport before 5 a.m. Yikes!

Next time I post I’ll be doing so from Pennsylvania… in the freezin’ cold! Brrrr. I hope it snows!

Giveaway

Don’t forget to enter my Trio Bar giveaway!