Daring to Experiment in the Kitchen

These are pictures from my attempt to make a no-bake apple pie. It's basically just crushed butter cookies (mixed with butter and sugar, like they didn't already have a lot of those) for crust and this recipe for apple pie filling. Husband liked it and so did I. Marguerite deigned to eat some.

The following are just pictures of something dumb I make when I get a craving for something sweet and there's no real dessert in the house. I just fry a peanut butter sandwich (with smores elements in it as well) in butter.

*used phone to take pics, hence the poor quality

Restarting the Engine that Sputtered (Hey, Use Cooking Jargons, Please!)

So this blog was interrupted by the joined forces of chicken pox, slipped disc, perfectionism, laziness, procrastination... Anyway, I had lined up a couple of post ideas, but as they accumulated, the more time they required and who's got time, right? Anyway, I finally got around to just chucking the ideas temporarily (they'll probably show up in future posts, but let me gather momentum first) and decided to just post something that's more recent.

Anyway, voilà les pics:

These are fried chickpeas. Small hands are too fast. That's my daughter's hand right there. I'm a fan of salty snacks (all the usual unhealthy ones) and my daughter seems to be leaning towards the same kind of appetite. Because of this, I've been cooking potato chips for Marguerite and myself (frying them in olive oil, no MSG, of course), so that we can refrain from eating store-bought ones. The other day, for variation I tried making fried chickpeas (using a can of garbanzos that was supposed to be used for hummus, oh well) and they turned out pretty decent. I loosely followed this recipe, changing the thyme leaves to dried Italian herbs (which did have thyme in it) for one.

Another one that I recently made is french toast with caramelized bananas. French toast was fine, but caramelized bananas were kind of a flop (esp since I just tried to adjust a bananas foster recipe). They tasted okay, but the syrup was grainy and the bananas were on their way to the bin anyway (just didn't want to waste them).

Had 1 carrot and 1 potato left. Found this recipe and tried it out. Of course, cut the measurements into thirds since I only had 1 carrot. I liked it. Marguerite didn't.