Like Butta...

When I was around this age.....
I would eat sticks of butter like they were candy. Gross right? They were delicious. My affinity for butter continued grossing out friends and roommates well after college. Then of course, when I decided to be healthy I abandoned my buttery ways for healthier options. Possibly that is why I forgot to include it when baking this weekend?

So I found some recipes for brownies and blueberry muffins on the stonyfield website for cooking with Yogurt (i.e. as a substituting for oil). I was WAY excited because I had all the ingredients on hand (pro of baking versus cooking, more shelf stable items) ....... Too bad that 'ol 'room temperature' butter thing meant that I microwaved the butter...... which is where it sat forgotten UNTIL I had already divided the muffins into the pan. A few expletives later I thought, well......what the hell, and swirled the melted butter into the already-mixed-already-in-the-pan muffins. Guess what? No bueno. That coupled with the addition of whole wheat (i went half and half as opposed to all white flour per the recipe) and probably too much oven time = hard and grainy muffins. They were decent when eaten immediately (but obviously i was full from batter), but the next morning they probably couldn't chipped a tooth. YIKES.

And THAT ladies and gentelman..... is why lauren can't bake. Muffin.... FAIL.

The brownies weren't horrible.... and by that I mean I ate most of the batter and was pretty indifferent about the actual baked goods themselves. MEH.

In an effort to show a picture of something I was successful at.... here was my lunch yesterday. I successfully had multiple food groups (protein of the animal and plant variety, grains, veggies.... that's hummus in there and WW pretzelsl, FYI) .... so let's redirect our attention to that, shall we?

This last weekend I got together with some friends for a slumber party and the hannah montana movie. What's that you say? Well, our respective ages were 24, 26, and 28......................... going on 12. It was so much fun, just being goofy and ridiculous at the sorority house. It was pretty much my everything :)

TGIthursday homies :)

Yet Another Installment of 'Lauren Cannot Bake'

Or maybe, lauren has zero cooking intuition and common sense. Oi. So there is this recipe from Martha Stewart that is categorized as easy. Psshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhah, right. For a ROCKET scientist.

I was enthused by my new free time on Monday nights (and i got to watch gossip girl for the first time in forever, i had no idea what was going on but still enjoyed it and was inspired to wear more pearls and headbands), and my new ingredient: the grourmet mushroom mix. Cremini, Shitake, and yellow something or other made the list. They looked so fancy and interesting... I was already proud of myself.

I purchased the phyllo dough and immediately dumped it on my counter (which was a lightly floured surface, direction #1... followed). I then immediately proceeded to unroll it, even as it broke into pieces. I rechecked the directions... it was supposed to be thawed (direction #2 not followed). AH NUTS.

So I decided to toss the most hopelessly broken sheets and try to double/triple/quadruple up the semi broken ones for good measure in holding it together. I put the mushroom/onion mix in the corners and tried to wet/crease the sides to fold. Note to self: not pretty. So not pretty.



On the baking sheet... trying their best to make it work... bless their little hearts.

See Martha's picture:See the burnt flaky mess of mine below. The saving grace for my appetite was the sauteed zucchini and the corn on the cob (with lime juice and sea salt... a little DELICIOUS and tangy tip I picked up from the fatfreevegan.. i'll never go back to butter... seriously)

Two forkfulls into it and I was in a pit of slightly burnt flakes. Newsflash, I used way too many sheets at once (thanks a lot for specifying martha) and apparently my oven was too hot. too hot for the hot tub. too hot for my mushroom hotpockets.

.... and then i gave up.

*sigh*

And then Peyton died or something on One Tree Hill. It was a stressful time in my apartment.