Kale/cheese/quinoa

1 cup quinoa
2 cups water
1/2 of a large bunch of kale, shredded into thin ribbons (I include the stems, especially if they're not too tough.)
grated cheese (maybe 3 oz?) I used Havarti but anything would probably be tasty

Put quinoa and water in a pot; bring to a boil. Cover and lower the heat. After 15 minutes, turn off the heat. Dump in the shredded cheese and stir a little bit with a fork. Add the shredded kale and stir a bit too. Put the lid back on and let sit for about 5 more minutes to lightly cook the kale and melt the cheese. Stir again and eat/serve.

Chocolate chip cookies (without a mixer!)

Recipe modified from http://www.cookingchanneltv.com/recipes/i-want-to-marry-you-cookies-recipe/index.html

1 cup butter
1 1/4 cups dark brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 cups flour
1 cup uncooked rolled oats
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1.5-2 cups chocolate chips

Melt the butter over the stove in a large pot. Turn off the heat. Stir in the sugars until well mixed, then place in fridge for 10 minutes to cool. Meanwhile - combine flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon.
Remove mixture from fridge. Add eggs and vanilla; mix well. Stir in flour mixture and oats, then chocolate chips.

Form into 1" (or slightly less) balls on parchment paper on cookie sheet. Chill in fridge for 30 minutes or more. Preheat oven to 325, bake for 12-14 (or more)
minutes. Remove parchment paper from cookie sheet and let cookies cool.

These are nice and chewy, not too thin...but I think I might omit the cinnamon next time. It's distracting. I can also see using a little bit less sugar and slightly fewer chocolate chips.
--
Next attempt, 1/24: 1 cup packed dark brown sugar, 1/4 cup white sugar, no cinnamon, 1 1/4 cups of chocolate chips. The amount of chocolate chips was good, but there was something off about the taste and texture. More sugar next time, I suppose.

poppyseed muffins

1.75 ? cups white whole wheat flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
2.5 tsp baking powder
dash of salt
1+ cups milk
1/2 cup poppyseeds
1/4 cup melted butter
1 egg
good bit of vanilla


Soak poppyseeds in milk. Combine ingredients like you would for other muffin recipes...

These were very poppyseed-y, but tastey. A little bitter in spurts, which might have been bites of poppyseeds that didn't get submerged fully while being soaked -- not sure.

whole wheat muffins

2 cups white whole wheat flour
3 tsp (1 TBS) baking powder
a few dashes of salt
a few dashes of cinnamon
1/2 c. brown sugar, packed (because my house has an insane glut of brown sugar right now)

1/4 cup melted butter
a little bit of oil (to make fat = 1/3 cup approx.)
2/3 c milk
1 egg
2/3 ? cup chocolate chips

(Standard mix dry + wet, put in chips, greased pan at 400 degrees, yada yada yada.)

These came out pretty well...

cranberry muffins

Modified from http://www.meatlessmonday.com/fresh-cranberry-muffins/

• 1 cup white flour
• 1 cup white whole wheat flour
• 1/3 cup brown sugar (dark)
• a bit less than 1/3 cup white sugar
  
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• cinnamon to taste
  
• 1 cup fresh cranberries, chopped
• 2/3 cup milk
• 1/4 cup (unsalted) butter or stick margarine, melted
• 1 teaspoon orange rind, grated
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 large egg, lightly beaten
• cooking spray

Preheat oven to 400. Mix flours, sugars, salt, and cinnamon. Mix milk, melted butter, orange rind, vanilla, and egg. Add chopped cranberries to dry ingredients, stir. Grease muffin tin (12-cup). Stir wet ingredients into dry until just combined. Spoon into muffin tins, bake for 18 minutes or until muffins spring back lightly when touched in the center. Remove immediately and cool on wire racks.

VERDICT: The texture was OK, but too tart. They also have a strange almost fake-sugar taste (not that I've really consumed enough fake sugar to know.) Maybe I needed to cut the cranberries into smaller pieces, or use the full 1/3 cup of sugar. Or stir some sugar into the cranberry mixture first. Dunno. Also, let the melted butter cool before stirring it into the milk mixture. I was impatient and mine re-solidified when it hit cold milk.

chocolate chip cookies w/ oat flour

1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup dark brown sugar, packed
1/3? cup white sugar

^cream

1 1/4 cups white flour
1 cup oat flour
3/4 tsp (?) baking soda
too much salt (next time: 1/2 tsp? or get a goddamn measuring spoon.)
^mix really well

add 2 eggs and 2ish tsp of vanilla to butter mixture. beat til creamy. stir in flour mixture. add about 3/4 of a package of chocolate chips. Chill, perhaps. Bake at 350 degrees for some amount of time more than 10 minutes, on parchment paper. Perhaps add slightly more flour next time. Or chill longer. Or just stop spazzing out about the quality of homemade baked goods because any cookie is a good cookie.

peach cobbler

Used these two (very similar) recipes
http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/easy-peach-cobbler-10000000257827/
http://southernfood.about.com/od/peachcobblers/r/r70913a.htm

which both do the odd thing where you melt butter in a pan in the oven and then pour a batter directly over it and then dump fruit over it and supposedly the batter/topping magically rises to the top. We'll see. I'm doubtful but I figure nothing with this mix of ingredients could taste bad, so who cares?

Modifications/notes:

Used extra lemon juice (2TBS?) because I like that slight citric acid counterbalance in my fruit
Used (I think) 5 very large peaches, sliced in cubes, which filled up (brimming) a 2-qt pyrex casserole
1/4-1/2 cup of sugar in the peaches - a cup seems like too much
2ish tsp of baking soda (oh shit I just realized it says baking powder...hmm. gah. it's been a long time since I made that mistake.)
used the 1 tsp vanilla
didn't boil anything
didn't peel anything
1/2 cup of sugar in the crust/dough

notes on how it turned out to come.

ETA: brought this to a party and everyone seemed to like it--it had a good amount of sugar. It was more liquidy than would be ideal, probably because I used extra peaches. Next time I won't pour in the extra liquid left sitting at the bottom of the bowl after I made the fruit mixture, and perhaps add some tapioca or cornstarch. The unpeeled peaches were fine. I baked it for 45 minutes (or more) but part of that was because I could see it was so liquidy. Some of the batter did rise to the top, but not all of it. Again, probably because I used extra peaches (or maybe because of the baking soda mixup--which didn't seem noticeable as far as flavor, fortunately.)

Also, for the love of Bob, if you can find freestone peaches or nectarines, do it. It's hard to cut fruit off a pit and into nice slices.