Four Delicious Things I Want to Make

1. Guinness Cupcakes: Do I need to explain this? These cupcakes look a little difficult to make, but at the same time...very simple idea. Simply mix the stout with a fairly traditional chocolate cupcake recipe, poke a hole in the top with a little holey-pokey thingy, fill to the brim, and bake. Also, the icing is made with Bailey's. My mother loves Bailey's. Loves. So, this may or may not be part of her Mother's Day present. Erring on the side of probably with a gigantic dose of definitely.

Photo credit; CHOW

2. The BIG GIGANTIC HUMONGOUS Salad of Delicious; I can't call it anything else, because honestly that's really all that it is. I will be honest, I am not a perfect girl, and I do not usually seek out salads to make and eat because they usually include things like copious amounts of NOT-delicious. I like steak. I like hamburgers. I am going to try to be a vegetarian this summer because I AM GOING TO CAMP. (Now, I love the fact that I'm going to camp [to be a counselor, you ninny; I'm young, I'm not a weirdo]. However, I'm going to err on the side of caution though and I'm going to avoid the camp meat. Camp and meat products have never boded well for me before.) Anyways, this salad combines all these wonderful flavors of tomatoes, avocado, feta, brown mushrooms (I'd sautee mine when I make this, just for extra flavor), shrimp (YUM), and get this...Miso. Miso is the stuff they make miso soup out of, silly (my mom calls it sock-soup, because it smells a little like socks; it's wonderful, just sock-ey). I'm going to attempt to pull this all together and figure out how to get that. Found this on the Guilty Kitchen!

Guilty Kitchen. Doesn't this look fantastic? I just want to eat the picture, that's all. I'll settle for anything.

3. A Chicken, Tomatoes and Garlic Easy Easy Lemon Peasy Dinner Dish: When I was home last, I complained about chicken catchetorri. Probably because I'm an ungrateful brat. Never again. This time, I will be the chicken-maker. And I will do it better. This recipe is from the Pioneer Woman (my favorite food/everything/lifestyle blog), and "oh-my-dear-Lord where does she come up with these things" recipe monger. It's a fairly lengthy amount of time to take for an "easy" dinner dish (especially in my family where we sometimes forget that no one's started dinner until around 7 or 8 when we're all wandering around the kitchen, pointing fingers and whining about being hungry), but it makes up for that by just being...easy! It's great. Salt and pepper some chicken pieces, cook 'em up in a pan with some butter and olive oil, then take them out, add some sherry, tomato chunks and tomato paste, stir and warm, add garlic, and basil. Once that's done, you just toss the chicken back in, put it in the over for a bit, make the pasta while you're at it, and then throw it all together and serve! Sounds like a lot, but there's basically no prep (which is a prerequisite in my life).

This is from the Pioneer Woman Blog. She's my absolute favorite blogger/food photographer. Honestly, doesn't that just look like a cozy, comfort food waiting to be made and passed down again and again? It does.

4. Banana Bread from the blog, Food Loves Writing. Shanalee (love that name, by the way) is a phenomenal, talented writer with a knack for making people think about what they're doing and making on a daily basis. She's had a lot of posts that really really resonate with me, and she's also from Chicago! It's so nice to read about things happening in the city I've come to love as my own, despite the fact that I'm a transplant. Anyways, I'll be the first person to say, shout and proclaim that I mother-effing hate bananas. Hate them. They're mushy an gross and they remind me of baby food. I didn't even eat real baby food when I was a baby (I tossed it on the dog), so why would I eat it now? No thanks. However, I do love banana bread. I like the nutty flavor, the slight hint of banana smell without the banana texture. Fantastic. My brother makes the best banana bread in the world, but I'm willing to bet I can one-up him with this recipe. Maybe.

This recipe actually really stuck out to me because Shanalee says she hates 'naners too. But she made this. And she explained that after being sick (because you're supposed to eat bananas in the third stage or so of coming off being sick), bananas are a staple, and are heaven-sent after crackers, dry toast and chicken noodle soup.

Super easy (banana bread always is), and delicious plain or with a little apple butter spread on top.

Food Loves Writing. Isn't this simply...fantastic? I'm so excited to start making this stuff. Totally going to bury my brother's banana bread. And hey, if I don't, then we still eat really good banana bread. So...win-win.

Anyway's that's really the bulk of the post.

Oh, fun fact. I wrote a terrorist speech today for one of my classes (if anyone reading this is an IU student, you should take the COLL-103 topics course taught by Professor Doctor Fritz Breithaupt; literally one of the most entertaining, interesting classes I've ever ever taken in my entire life. He wears knickerboxers sometimes.), and we had to pick a topic to really rail on in a style similar to the Unabomber Manifesto. Don't read that, by the way. The guy is afraid of technology. He's crazy, but his writing is brilliantly done. Insane, but a little bit brilliant. He also murdered people. So...grain of salt. In this case...pounds of salt...from the Dead Sea. Anyways, I wrote mine about censorship, and surprisingly enough got way into it and basically trashed the people who ban books. It was entertaining.

The point of that little babble is that you should never ever never underestimate the power of a pen and paper. Yes, I do all my writing in pen before I type it out, just because it feels more connected that way, and I catch more of my stupid grammatical errors. Not all of them, but most. Writing that drabble today really helped me relax and decompress after a very stressful day (floor drama, life drama, I lost my ID like 4 times within two week), and I'm going to go to bed (very late) very calmly.

And that's why you should procrastinate on papers until the very last second. Because it de-stresses you.

Stop laughing. Go to bed.

GOODNIGHT!

Love, Miss Guided.