chocolate chip cookies

This recipe is completely unhealthy, full of fat, and absolutely DELICIOUS!  I know, it goes against what I should be using this blog for...but I just had to share.  With it being so close to Halloween, I have justified this by suggesting you pass these cookies out as treats, instead of packaged (full of preservatives) candy.

Here's what you need:
1 cup of butter
1 cup of white sugar
1 cup of packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups of flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
2 cups of rolled oats, ground*
1 bag or 2 cups of chocolate chips (i use toll house mini semi-sweets)
1 chocolate bar (i used a big symphony milk chocolate bar)

baking sheet
parchment paper (saves time/less messy/cookies don't stick)
mixer
food processor (i use my ninja, and it rocks)
2 large mixing bowls
measuring utensils

Here's what you do:
*put your candy bar in the freezer until it's frozen
*preheat your oven to 350
1.  Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl.  Add the eggs, one at a time, and mix well.  Add vanilla.
2.  measure 2 cups of rolled oats and put them in your food processor, process them until they become "chunky" oat flour, i have pictures below
3.  In a separate bowl, combine 2 cups of flour, the processed oats, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.
4.  Slowly add the dry mixture to the wet mixture, blending completely.
5. place your frozen candy bar into your food processor, and process it into little shavings or chunks
6.  fold in your chocolate chips and the chocolate shavings.

Here's how you bake:
Drop rounded spoonfuls of the cookie batter about an 1.5 inches apart on your parchment lined cookie sheet.  Bake for 9 minutes, but not longer.  When you pull the cookies out, they might look undercooked...but trust me, they are done.  I pull the parchment off the tray, so the cookies can cool (without continuing to bake on a hot cookie sheet).

This recipe made about 40 cookies for me.

rolled oats in the ninja

                                        

rolled oats, after the fight with the ninja...ninja won

                                        

yummy cookie batter

                                        

finished product, nothing better than warm cookies and milk

Halloween - the Zumba way!

I love Halloween!  I am a firm believer that if every day were a costume party, the world would be a happier place!  Seriously, how can you not giggle at these pictures?!?  

So, for those of you who may not already know this, I am a fitness instructor.  I teach Zumba, cardio hip hop, and sometimes toning classes.  Below are a few pictures from my friend Lisa's Halloween Zumba party this past Friday.  Lisa and I teach at Mountainside Fitness, and she is one of the women who encouraged me to become an instructor.  

When I thought of doing this blog, I thought it would be a good place to share healthier options for yummy food, since I work in a field that promotes overall healthy living.  I'm thinking now, that it may become more of a place where I can share yummy recipes, workout tips, crafty adventures, toddler antics, etc., etc., etc.  In case you didn't already know this, I have two toddlers that run my life.  Alex is 31 months old and Gabby is 20 months old.  I'll post pictures of them sometime, so you can meet them.

Have a great Halloween week everyone!

Lisa and me at her Boo Bash

some of the Mountainside Fitness zumba crew

everyone in their Halloween costumes, ready to sweat

with Nancy from A to Zebra celebrations...she makes awesome party banners y'all!!

whole wheat spaghetti with heirloom tomato sauce

After teaching Zumba at my gym in Mesa, I stopped by the Superstition Ranch Market, a little market with a ton of fresh fruit and veggies.  My friend Nicole suggested it, and I am so glad I listened!  I love a great deal, mostly because I am horrible at finding any deals; so when I walked out of the market with 5 bags full of fruits and veggies and only spent $27, I felt awesome!  The highlight of my little shopping excursion was the big basket sitting on the edge of the tomato/avocado aisle with a sign that read, "HEIRLOOM TOMATOES...UGLY BUT DELICIOUS!"  Ugly?  Let me tell you now, I have never come across an ugly heirloom tomato!  Maybe it's because I've tasted the delectable goodness of an heirloom, so I already know that dinner is going to be great.  These works of garden art/genius are the reason I am making Bryan build me a garden for next spring (and by Bryan, I mean our awesome landscaper...shout out to Desert Edge, you guys are great!).

So, with 4 giant heirloom tomatoes (I think they were Cherokee Purples)...I was on a mission to make some sauce for dinner.  Below are the ingredients I used, minus onion and sea salt.

Heirloom Tomato Sauce

(serves 4)

Ingredients

3 lbs. heirloom tomatoes (I used 4 large tomatoes)

6 cloves of garlic, minced or crushed

6 basil leaves

1/4 large yellow or red onion, diced small

¼ cup extra virgin olive oil

sea salt to taste

Directions

1.  Bring a pot of water to a boil, and drop the tomatoes in for about 10 seconds, long enough to shrivel the skin slightly.  Remove from water with a slotted spoon and place in a colander under cool water.  When the tomato is cool enough to handle, transfer to a cutting board, slice in half, and remove the skin.  It should slide off of the tomato meat easily.   You can remove the seeds if you like, but they don’t bother me so I leave them in. 

2.  In a large, heavy skillet, heat oil over medium heat and add garlic.  Stir the garlic continuously for about 2 minutes, or until it begins to brown.  Add the onions and cook for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Crush the tomatoes and add to the skillet.  Add 3 basil leaves.  Stir and allow the sauce to boil.  Reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes.  Uncover, stir and let the sauce cook for about 10 – 15 more minutes.  This should thicken the sauce slightly.  Cut the remaining basil leaves into thin strips and add during the last few minutes of cooking.  Add salt to taste.

Garlic Baked Chicken

Not trying to brag, oh wait...I am trying to brag!  I live 10 minutes away from an olive mill.  Who would think, an olive mill in Arizona?  Yes, there is one here.  www.queencreekolivemill.com  if you want to check it out.  They have a shop online, so you can order some of this homegrown goodness!  If you are local, email me.  We can go there for lunch...or breakfast, their bistro has phenomenal vanilla waffles.

I'm all for anything infused, oils...alcohol...well, that's pretty much the extent of my love for all things infused.  QC Olive Mill has a delicious variety of gourmet oils that have been infused with different things, from garlic to chocolate, lemon to chili.  In this recipe, I used their roasted garlic infused olive oil.  I love garlic.  Seriously, I eat it on almost everything.  Because most of you probably don't have roasted garlic infused olive oil handy, I wrote the recipe using extra virgin olive oil and crushed garlic.  It tastes the same, minus the "roasted" part.

Garlic Baked Chicken

Ingredients

·       4 chicken breasts

·       2/3 cup Italian bread crumbs

·       1/3 cup Parmesan Cheese

·       ½ cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil

·       4 Cloves Garlic, crushed

·       dried Italian seasoning (optional)

What else you need

·       baking dish

·       2 shallow bowls

·       small skillet or saucepan

·       knife

·       meat mallet or rolling pin

Directions

1.     Preheat your oven to 450.

2.   Rinse the chicken and pat dry.

3.    Trim any fat off of the chicken, then using a meat mallet (or rolling pin) flatten the chicken to ½ in. thickness.

4.   In a small skillet or saucepan, heat the olive oil over medium heat and add the garlic.  Cook for about 5 mintues, stirring fairly often so you do not burn the garlic. Remove from heat and transfer to bowl.

5.   In a separate bowl, mix the bread crumbs and parmesan cheese, also add the Italian seasoning if you want more bold flavor.

6.   Dip the chicken into the garlic oil, and then into the bread crumb mixture.  Cover both sides with the mix, and transfer to a baking dish.

7.  Bake for 35 minutes, or until the chicken is no longer pink and juices run clear when it is cut.

honey sugar cookies

These are the easiest cookies to make!  6 ingredients, a half hour, and you are good to go!  I found this recipe after days of searching for baking recipes that call for honey in place of sugar, or at least honey that decreases the excessive amount of sugar.  I hope you like these cookies as much as my household has!

P.S. I didn't grow up in the kitchen, so feel free to ignore the little notes I write to myself throughout my recipes.  I'm just trying to make my life easier :)  Oh, and always buy local when you can (like locally farmed honey...is honey farmed?).  Support your town!  One last thing, I just learned that the hard cookies i mention below, soften right up if you pop them in the microwave for 10 seconds.

HONEY SUGAR COOKIES

Ingredients

_   ½ cup butter, at room temperature

_   ½ cup honey*

_   ¼ cup sugar

_   1 ½ cup whole wheat flour

_   ½ tsp baking soda

_   1/8 tsp salt

_   1 cup sugar (for rolling)

Directions

Preheat your oven to 300.  In a bowl, combine flour, baking soda, and salt.  In a separate bowl, cream butter and ¼ cup of sugar.  Add honey and cream well.  Slowly add the flour mixture to the butter mixture, finishing by hand so that you do not over mix the dough.  (It is delicious at this point, my dough almost did not make it to the oven.)  Chill the dough for 10 minutes.  Drop rounded spoonfuls into the 1 cup of sugar to coat, and place on a parchment lined cookie sheet.  Bake 15 to 18 minutes…not longer, because they get hard if the honey cooks too long.

*I just learned that honey is much more workable if you heat it for about 15 seconds in the microwave, and spray the measuring cup with PAM, before you measure the honey.

a new blog, again

Here's the deal...I'm horrible at blogging.  I generally blog for a few weeks, then forget for a year.  At least, that's what happened last time.  I was going to delete all of my blog entries from last year and use that address to start this blog; but when I read through them, I couldn't delete anything.  It's kind of cool to see where I was a year ago.  It's refreshing to see how far I've come, and a reminder that I still have so much to accomplish.  So, here's my new blog.  Sugared Honey Iced Tea.  Let's hope I can do this for longer than 3 weeks.