Tortellini Soup with Spinach

Chicken noodle soup may be the default meal when you’re sick, but I think I like this pasta soup better. It not only includes cheese and spinach, but if you include the red pepper flakes it has a bit of a kick as well. Perfect for clearing up those clogged sinuses!

Normally soup would make perfect sense for the end of January - cold dreary weather demands comfort food. Except that it was 65 degrees today. I ate lunch outside on the patio this afternoon. Seriously, I'm calling this the Year without Winter, and for a snowlover that is pretty devastating. So in defiance of the weather, I'm eating soup anyway. Haha wea-THOR (aka the God of Weather), I'm going to eat warm and comforting soup even if I'm wearing shorts (which is deeply disturbing)

I hope you enjoy!

Chicken Stir-fry with Mushrooms, Onions, and Broccoli

There are 12 billion chicken stir-fry recipes on the internet – so clearly the world needs 12 billion and 1. I constantly like to experiment with stir-fries; while I generally know what I want in my stir-fry, I tend to try new combinations in the marinades each time in hopes of finally finding the perfect one. I don’t know what I’ll do the day I finally find the magic marinade, probably keel over in a bowl of soy sauce from shock, but in the mean time I’m having a blast trying many many tasty experiments.

This one was initially described as an “Easy Kung Pao” recipe, which I didn’t really taste in the sauce. It didn’t have the same kick or flavoring that I tend to associate with one of my favorite take-out items which made me a bit upset. It was only by renaming it and ignoring the rest of the directions that I was happy with the end results. So I hope you enjoy this remixed recipe!

Puffy Peanut Butter Cookies with Chocolate Chips

I know – another peanut butter chocolate cookie recipe? Didn’t I just post one? How much peanut butter am I going to force you poor souls to buy and consume alongside chocolate? WHEN WILL IT END?

This one is different, I promise. For one, it has gluten in it. It’s also a peanut butter cookie base with chocolate chips, rather than a chocolate peanut butter cookie base with peanut butter chips. Fine line, but big difference (for connoisseurs of all things peanut butter and chocolate, such as myself, at least). This cookie also cooks up nice and fluffy, like you’re eating a traditional chocolate chip cookie that magically also tastes like peanut butter.

It’s a hard job singlehandedly keeping the peanut business afloat with my obsession, but someone’s got to do it.

Although I'm sure everyone is sick of cookies, sweet, and even plain eating at this point in the holiday season, these cookies are worth making an exception for. Besides, you can always stop eating sweets after New Year's, right? 

Egg Drop Soup with Veggies

Egg Drop Soup was the first soup I made from scratch on my own. I had been paging through the Joy of Cooking (the only cookbook I owned at the time) to try to figure out what I could make with a limited budget and a limited trip to the grocery store (it was hovering around zero outside and I didn’t want to leave my dorm if I could help it). Luckily, I stumbled upon a recipe for Egg Drop Soup and the rest, as they say is history.

This version derivates from the original quite a bit – I added sliced mushrooms, garlic, and spinach to beef it up. This recipe is low-fat but stuffed with iron, protein, and taste.  It's the perfect soup with a cold wintery day as well as the morning when you wake up with a pounding headache and no amount of tea is making you feel better.

Oreo Cheesecake Cupcakes

One of my favorite ice cream flavors in the world is cookies ‘n cream. Sweet cream + oreos? Winning combination in my book. It was always the one flavor I didn’t mind mixing when I worked at the ice cream store. So when I saw that the Martha had created a cupcake that not only added cheesecake to the mix, but also made creating the crust easier, I was sold on the concept.

These are awesome. Sweet, tangy, and full of Oreos. Winning combination! Also kosher. Anyone else remember the celebrations that went on when Oreos got certified as kosher? I’m fairly sure my best friend at the time was close to tears she was so happy. Thus is the power of Oreos.

Seriously, it’s the holiday season and that means there’s no way your going to be sticking to your good intentions anyway. So make this and bring tears of joy to your face (and maybe your friends’ if your in the holiday spirit). They’re that good.

Ricotta Gnocchi

Gnocchi are awesome, but the idea of destroying my kitchen to make the traditional version with potato has never been appealing. I grew up on horror stories from my father about how flour and potato got everywhere when he made them. We’re talking flour in every crevice available and the unenviable task of trying to sweep it and mop it without turning it into paste, as flour is wont to do when you add water.

So this recipe immediately caught my eye when I noticed the ingredients – ricotta in place of potato, a bit of parmesan, and egg. Sounded pretty simple! I still ended up destroying part of my kitchen when it came time to roll out the dough into ropes to cut into the individual gnocchi, but it was a much smaller area than I’d feared. These are easy enough to make on a weekday night if you’d like (though I didn’t want to chance it and made them on a Sunday and froze the extra). Enjoy!

Baked Oatmeal

I have a sad confession to make. As much as I rave about oatmeal in cookies, I hate it as breakfast on its own. I’ve tried and tried to eat it – with raisins, brown sugar, maple syrup, instant, steel cut, microwave, stove-top, slow cooker – you name it, I’ve tried it. The problem comes down to texture; oatmeal is mushy. And I’m not a huge fan of mushy (see also: why I don’t like mashed potatoes).

So this recipe was a treat. It combined my love of crispy oatmeal from cookies or granola, fruit, and maple syrup without being terribly mushy. I actually enjoyed oatmeal for breakfast! That Heidi Swanson is a smart chick. This isn’t what I would call an easy breakfast – there’s too long a baking time for that – but it is relatively simple and would work great for a large crowd to feed.

Baked Eggs with Leeks

One of the first dishes I learned how to make was fried eggs. My mother, being a clever woman, taught my sisters and I that the best part of eggs is the play value – as long as you have runny eggs, you can puncture the yolk with the crusts of your toast. So clearly I had to learn how to make them for myself as soon as I was allowed near a hot stove (it was longer than you think. I was a clumsy child, not allowed near hot glue guns or candles for fear of burning down the house. In retrospect, that was not an exaggerated fear).

Baked eggs are an extension of my love affair with fried eggs. I once made a recipe that called for stuffing them inside a tomato with pesto. This recipe is less time intensive (no hollowing out other foods to act as a container!) and is better suited to fall when getting good tomatoes, let alone fresh basil, is nearly impossible. Leeks are sauted before added to ramekins and topped with an egg. Wait about 10 minutes and you have an adorable and delicious breakfast. Or dinner. Or brunch. Whatever, it’s versatile, that’s all I’m saying.

Also, the play value remains intact. You can cook these to make sure the yolks remain runny, allowing you to chase errant strands of yolk around each ramekin with toast crusts. Because that is what makes life awesome.

Onion Soup with Apple Cider

Welcome to 2012! The world didn't end, so I guess the Mayan's had that part wrong. Hope none of you made any silly decisions expecting the Apocalypse to arrive. If you did, here's a soup recipe to cheer you up. 

Onion and apple cider might not sound like a good pairing to the rest of the world, but those people are what I what call wrong. Possibly even crazy if they dismissed the idea out of hand. Both are in season right now and play off each other wonderfully – the sweetness of the caramelized white onions is great next to the tartness of apple cider. Plus one-pot recipes are always a bonus when you don’t fell like doing dishes (which in my case is always).  You have to babysit the onions at the beginning to make sure they don’t burn, but after about 20 minutes of stirring occasionally, the hard work is done and you can sit back and enjoy until it’s done simmering.

Mark another tally in my checklist of things that make a recipe amazing (other categories include: taste, easy availability in the grocery store, and inexpensiveness).