Quickie: NEW MICROWAVE! Sour Dough

I'm way more excited than I should be about my new (well, new to me) microwave. It's yellow! And it has a timer on it! Which is more than I can say about the last one... also, it works.

Other new, exciting ventures: Sour Dough Starter!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Pretzels

I was inspired to make these the other morning while eating a Peanut Butter Cup (my fave candy, hint hint) and thinking about how good chocolate covered pretzels are. BAM! Pretzels covered in peanut butter and chocolate. It's rlly easy...

Number One: Ingredients

Chocolate chips, pretzels, peanut butter and a cookie sheet lined with foil. Bonus secret ingredient: freezer space for the tray...

Step One: Melt the Peanut Butter

Nothing too fancy, the microwave works just fine.

You can judge about how much peanut butter based on how many pretzels you are using, you should probably stir it a few times to make sure everything gets melty...



Step Two: Put em' in there!

EVERYBODY IN THE POOL!

It was a li'l messy but I found using a fork worked better than a spoon. Get them all nice and coated and then onto the foil lined tray.

 

 

Sean loves to help!

 FOUR: FREEZER

The peanut butter will never really get that hard so 15 or 20 min. in the freezer is fine.

 

 Melt the chocolate: I just used chocolate chips and melted them in a bowl in the microwave, stiring every 45 seconds or so. I would tell you how long it took total, but my microwave is wack and doesn't have time settings (or work).

Sean loves to help! part two

Velvety cloak of chocolate: it's pretty hard to get these not to look a little wonky, but they taste excellent (or at least that's what all the drunk people at my house said, and they wouldn't lie)... the peanut butter may come off a little bit in the chocolate, but it's all going back on the pretzel so the overall taste isn't really effected.

Toward the end of the process I got a really good technique going of balancing the pretzel on a fork, lowering it into the chocolate and then tapping the fork on the side of the bowl to get the excess off. Lookin' mad professional. This photo is clearly from before I figured that method out.

TA DA! A whole tray of peanut-butter chocolate pretzels. Really easy unless you are microwave challenged.  Freeze these babies for about 15 minutes to set the chocolate and then store in a tupperware in the fridge for safe-keeping.

 

 

Dinner time! Baked Potatoes!

When a bike is your number one mode of transportation there are some foods that are just hard to justify getting at the grocery store. For example, a five pound bag of potatoes. Thus, I took advantage of having access to a car when I was home and picked up a beautiful bag of potatoes.

all this could be yours for just $2.49...

After a long, hard, day at the office (yeah, actually) all I wanted was a baked potato. This isn't something that really seems to require a recipe, but in case you were wondering here is the informative and deceptively named website: "How to bake a potato.
If you are fancier, here is Alton Brown's recipe, courtesy of the food network. According to this asshole (just kidding, luv this dude), you need "1 large russet potato (If it looks like Mr. Potato Head(r), you've got the right one.)" Choose your potato carefully, this is VERY important.

this will have to be good enough.

after preheating my oven to 350 and moving my oven racks as directed ("... position racks in top and bottom thirds"), I put my tater in the microwave. Because let's be serious, I'm not trying to wait a hour for my potato to cook in the oven.

it's ART

PRO TIP: microwave (anything) until it's almost cooked and then pop it into the oven to finish it off, makes you feel 50 - 75% better about all the radiation...GUARANTEED!








I topped my li'l baby off with some pesto and shredded mozz cheese, mmmmmm!