The Perfect Crime

Indeed it is.

As far as sessionable (you can drink a ton if it) goes this saison / farmhouse ale totally fits the bill. It comes in at a respectable 6.8% ABV but it won't knock you for a loop. The brew pours easily with minimal head; so if you're the kind of person that absolutely despises heady beer then this is the beer for you. It has a very smooth feel to it with an earthy flavor that has just a hint of fruit at the tip and a smokey finish.

Being a collaboration between Stone, Evil Twin, and Stillwater I was expecting it to really knock my socks off. Don't get me wrong, it was good...just not OMG amazing. It did however go very well with the Breezeway Burger I whipped together for lunch :)

Flavor Country.

I upped the ante on the burger and went with grass fed beef. There was an obvious difference in the flavor with this higher quality of meat. After this beer and hefty meat creation I was pretty stuffed. A pleasant nap was had :)

 If I had to give this beer a rating (which I guess i'm doing now?) I'd give it a 3.75 out of 5. Definitely give it a shot if you come across it...but don't go out of your way to get it.

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Oatmeal Banana Muffins

These just sound disgusting to Mr. WSBF because he's not a huge fan of oatmeal and actively despises bananas. But I LOVE them! And I was so skeptical because they use no flour and so few ingredients I thought for sure they'd be boring. But they're so not. And they're so easy!

Ingredients:

2 bananas (preferably very ripe)

2 1/2 cups oatmeal

1/2 cup sugar (this could easily be reduced)

1/3 cup apple sauce

2 eggs

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. baking soda

Cinnamon

Mix all of the ingredients together and scoop into cupcake papers. I usually fill them pretty full because I like overflowing cupcakes and muffins, but you're supposed to fill them 2/3 of the way.

Bake for 15-20 minutes at 400 degrees. My toothpick came out perfectly clean after around 18 minutes.

Let them cool a tad and enjoy!

I'm so happy to have found an easy to make, healthy, gluten-free breakfast recipe. Two of these kept me from thinking about food until lunch. OK, that's a lie. I'm never not thinking about food... But I was satisfied.

Total Cost: ~$3 (makes 12-15)

Total Time: 20-25 minutes

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Dogma

 No no...not the Kevin Smith movie of the same name. The Beer. It's a rare post from Mr. WeShouldBeFat

Welcome to flavor country.

It seemed a bit of a shame that there hasn't been a dedicated beer post yet. I probably drink more different types of beer than I eat different kinds of food. Anywho, on to this delicious beer. You can check out its beer advocate score if you care about that sort of thing, but you can trust me when I say it's good.

There is a smooth taste throughout when drinking this stuff. Pour it into a glass to get the full experience. Dogma has a great mix of smells that waft over you as you drink it. To put it in *non fancy beer* terms, it smells like nature. You'll get a faint honey taste at the start and a smooth hoppiness through to the finish. I was worried that all the ingredients would lead to a flavor that was overwhelming; I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was only whelmed by its flavor instead.

Don't tell Ballast Point I used their glass...

This is one of the better beers I've tried. Lately there seems to be a trend of beers trying to smack you in the face with hops. Dogma let's you enjoy its hops alongside a spicy, earthy taste that will prove a pleasant experience.

I totally don't remember what I was eating while I drank this... it was probably our Nachos. I'll let the lady correct me below if I'm wrong on that one.


~ Cheers!

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Snickerdoodle Rolo Cookies

Yes, that's right. Snickerdoodles, with rolos. Baked right inside.

Decadent.

Unfortunately I do not have any decent after photos. Or any after photos where the cookies are right side up and not packaged in tupperware.

Use your favorite snickerdoodle recipe (I looked up a bunch online since this was my first snickerdoodle recipe) and buy a package of mini rolos to stick in the middle. This is important.

Make sure the dough is big enough to wrap around the rolo so it's completely in the middle.

Roll 'em in cinnamon and sugar! Once you bake you'll have lovely snickerdoodles on the outside and gooey caramel and chocolate on the inside. 

They really are decadent. I made these way back for work for Christmas (along with no-fail chocolate chip cookies) and they were very well loved.

I made a lot...

10/10, would bake again. Although you do have to turn them upside down to cool if the bottom of the cookie has some of the rolo sticking out, otherwise you'll be scraping hardened caramel off your cooling rack.

Total Cost: ~$10 (should be less, if you have most of the cookie ingredients already)

Total Time: 1 hour to bake several batches

Note: In this particular post, the photos are courtesy of my phone, which, while awesome and pretty decent at playing camera, is no match for Rich's actual camera. So if the pics look like cell phone pics, it's 'cause they are.

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One Pan Irish Nachos

We love nachos. So much, in fact, that we make them every week (Nacho Sunday!). 

Today is St. Patrick's Day, and I'm 1/4 Irish (and damn proud of it! Although I'm also damn proud to celebrate Cinco de Mayo...). It's also nacho day. I felt we should honor the Irish and the potato famine that caused so many of them to come to America (probably including my ancestors) by making our nachos Irish. 

Oh my goodness this was a good idea. Going to be doing this a lot more often.

This is called "one pan" because other than a butcher block to chop the veggies the whole thing was made in one cast iron skillet, and then we ate directly out of it. It was glorious.

Ingredients:

Potatoes

Soyrizo

Corn

Cheese

Bell pepper

Tomatoes

Cilantro

Avocado

Sour cream

Spices

Heat the cast iron skillet for a couple of minutes, then add a small layer of olive oil. Chop the potatoes into bite sized pieces and put them in the pan. Season generously with salt and pepper and whatever other spices you want. 

If you don't have a cast iron skillet, get one. The twenty bucks you'll spend is way, way worth it. Cast iron skillets keep very even heat on the whole thing so every piece gets cooked the exact same amount, preventing overcooking some pieces while barely cooking others. Plus, you can stick them in the oven. Seriously, they're great.

While those are cooking, chop the veggies and shred the cheese. We used the same veggies we do in regular nachos, but I imagine a wider variety of toppings will be good. Green onions, specifically.

Wow, that's a terrible picture... But you get the idea.

Once the potatoes are a few minutes away from being ready, add the soyrizo to the pan. I scooped half the potatoes on top of each other to make room. Once that was just about done, I added some corn. You could also add beans to make it real nachos, but there's so much going on you don't need to.

And then some cheese.

And then put it in the oven. That's probably one of the greatest things about cast iron - goes right from the stove to the oven. Just remember that the whole skillet is hot, so you absolutely need to use an oven mitt. Cook the skillet at 350 degrees for 5-10 minutes, or until the cheese is as bubbly as you like.

Then put all the vegetables on it! So good. How good? We made this early in the evening after not having lunch, and because we're fat kids we were kind of hungry again at our normal dinner time (8-9pm), so we made a second batch. It really is amazing we don't weigh more.

LOOK AT HOW PRETTY IT IS!

Naturally, it being St. Patrick's Day and all, we paired it with Harp. And it was good.

Total Cost: less than $10, feeds two fat kids 

Total Time: ~25 minutes

Note: In this particular post, most of the photos are courtesy of my phone, which, while awesome and pretty decent at playing camera, is no match for Rich's actual camera. So if the pics look like cell phone pics, it's 'cause they are. Especially the one of the potatoes and soyrizo... it's like I didn't even look at it after. Ugh.

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Egg and Spinach Casserole

Not gonna lie, totally saw this on Pinterest and just had to try it. I'm not one of those people who can skip breakfast and when I get hungry it's all I can think about (apologies to the boyfriend for putting up with me when I'm cranky and hungry).

That being said, this egg casserole is fantastic.

I went a little overboard with the garlic...

Ingredients:
Spinach (take what you think you need and double it)
Eggs
Cheese
Spices
Anything else you want!

Sauté the spinach (clean it first... and remove any stems). I pour a tad of olive oil into the pan and sprinkle salt and pepper over the leaves. Spinach wilts down to a tiny fraction of what it is fresh, so you should really pile it on. This photo shows a pittance of the amount of spinach you should use, even for a small 8x8 inch pan, but I forgot to take the photo when it was all piled on. This amount was just the leftovers of the spinach I already had (after piling it high in the pan) because there wasn't enough.

Ignore my awful tile. Lime green splatters? Really?

The really great thing about this casserole (well... any casserole) is that you can put anything you want in it. I had a jalapeño that was about to get all wrinkled so I chopped it up. Onions are great additions, as are chives and green onions. Mmmmm....

While the spinach is wilting (and make sure to turn it so each leaf gets properly wilted and no one leaf is over wilted), chop up whatever else you plan to use. Then scramble your eggs. The idea is to have just as much egg to cover the other ingredients; for an 8x8 inch pan I used 6 large eggs.

Put the sautéed spinach at the bottom of the pan (the original Pinterest recipe says to spray the pan with oil, but I've made this a few times and never have and it's been fine), then sprinkle a thick layer of cheese (again, a good opportunity to use what you have on hand - I had some leftover mozzarella and pepper jack), and top with the other ingredients.

Slowly pour the eggs over the other ingredients and use a fork to gently ease the egg into the layers. Then I sprinkled just a little bit more cheese over the top, pushed it into the egg, and generously peppered the top.

Cook at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until it's as brown and bubbly as you like it. I didn't hear the timer go off on this one so it's slightly more brown than normal, but it was not burnt at all and tasted fantastic.

See? Look how beautiful and fluffy that is. 

Then I topped it with sour cream, Tapatio, and homemade salsa. And went back for seconds. And would have gone back for thirds if I wasn't going to be eating again soon...

You can make a big pan of these and save them in the fridge for one of the quickest and healthiest breakfasts that will keep you full until lunchtime, as long as you eat lunch at a normal hour and don't try to hold off until 2pm like some people do.

Total Time: 45 minutes

Total Cost: $5 plus the cost of whatever else you add

Note: In this particular post the photos are courtesy of my phone, which, while awesome and pretty decent at playing camera, is no match for Rich's actual camera. So if the pics look like cell phone pics, it's 'cause they are.

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Shrimp Enchiladas

This was also the night we discovered how fat we really should be. It also happened to be Valentine's Day.

We've made enchiladas before and both agreed enchiladas with shrimp in them would be quite delicious. I made the suggestion to make something with shrimp for Valentine's Day, since we never splurge on good shrimp (eco-friendly shrimp is nearly impossible to find). So it was natural that shrimp enchiladas was going to be our VDay menu. (That, and Rich had been asking for enchiladas for almost two weeks...)

Oh, you're in the kitchen? There must be food I can snub.

We've also recently discovered Whole Foods. Not in the sense that we didn't know it existed, but in the sense that until the last month or so Whole Foods was the wildly expensive yuppie grocery store you went to if you wanted to talk to staff members with dreads and those beanie hats that are only half on your head (how do those things stay on?). But I'd gone in there a couple times to find some body products for my ridiculously sensitive skin and discovered the prices weren't as ridiculous as I'd thought, especially for the quality. 

One day we went in there together. The Hillcrest location forces you to enter through the produce section, where everything is organic and there's space for locally grown produce. Towards the back is the meat counter. I'll admit that the meat counter at Whole Foods is enticing. For a bunch of dead animal sitting on lettuce behind a glass it's a very sexy part of the store. And this is coming from an almost-vegetarian. Rich? He almost looked aroused at the meat counter. 

And then we got to the beer aisle. So. Much. Beer. And it's all good and lots of it is local! Rich found heaven.

All the beer!

Anyway, so Whole Foods has a seafood counter within the meat counter, and every species is labeled with a form of certification from the Marine Stewardship Council (which may or may not be a great thing... best to do your own research on your seafood ahead of time). We bought shrimp. However, we were not the only people to want shrimp for our Valentine's Day dinner and were only able to get about a half pound of the uncooked shrimps. Should be plenty, right? It's enchiladas... how much shrimp do we need?

Get a full pound. Maybe we're just fat kids, but the thought of making an 8x8 inch dish of enchiladas seemed unfilling. A 9x13 dish was more appropriate (and leftovers!). But we did not buy enough shrimp for a full dish... so we had to get creative chopping them. A half pound would have been perfect for a 2 person serving, but we stretched it into a 4 person serving. Oh well.

Ingredients:

Shrimp

Tortillas

Pepper jack cheese

Enchilada sauce

Onions (optional, but awesome)

Cook your shrimps, if they don't come pre cooked. Stick them in some boiling water for 3-5 minutes (uncooked shrimps are slightly gray when purchased and turn pink the second they hit the water... it's really cool to watch!). Also, de-vein and de-tail your shrimps.

Cut them into little pieces, if necessary, if you didn't buy enough. We sliced them in half both vertically and horizontally.

Soften your tortillas. We use a tortilla warmer that goes in the microwave. Layer each tortilla with a small bit of cheese, as many shrimp bits as you want (but don't go overboard...), and onions if you want. Roll 'em up.

Once your pan is stacked with rolled enchiladas, pour enchilada sauce so that the rolled tortillas are covered. Cover that with shredded cheese.

Cook for about 20 minutes at 350 degrees, or until the cheese at the edges of the pan starts to bubble and brown.

Top your serving with sour cream, avocado, hot sauce and any other toppings you want. But in the interest of keeping the shrimp flavor, it's a good idea to not get too crazy with the toppings or other ingredients. We'd forgotten toppings so all we had was sriracha, but it was delicious anyway.

Total Cost: $10, plus market price of shrimp (serves 2-4, depending on how many shrimp you buy)

Total Time: ~35 minutes

We weren't about to share the shrimp with her, but she can have cheese!

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Vegetarian Pho with Fried Tofu

 Hot, spicy pho

We discovered a love for tofu at this strange little bar right by my place that served pizza, tots, Vietnamese sandwiches, and pho. And beer. What an unusual combination, right? And they had things like breakfast pizza which sounded gross (egg on pizza?) but smelled so good. I ordered the pho with tofu one of the first times I went there on a whim and because I'd never had it before and I was hooked. I never ordered anything else at that place.

Eventually, they started running out of pho. I would be impossibly disappointed after getting my heart set on a nice big bowl of hot pho and learn they didn't have any. The bar went through a lot of changes in a few months, and we finally learned it was closing to allow the owner to move on to bigger and better things (you can read about that here). But I never stopped loving the pho.

So I figured... why not make it?

Turns out, however, the ingredient list for authentic pho is way long. To get the broth right you have to simmer a beef bone for hours and add all these spices I don't have. So I gave up and resolved to find another pho spot that wasn't 15 miles away. Then Rich got sick. It started with just a tickle in the throat one night, a very chilly night. Pho was sounding really good, and I'd just discovered pre-packaged pho base at Sprouts. So I figured why not, let's give it a whirl. And it turned out pretty darn good, especially for a first try. My only recommendation is to either get a meat base, add your own spices to a vegetarian broth, or load up on the sriracha. The vegetarian base by itself is a little... lacking.

The steps are actually ridiculously easy, as long as you have a good soup base.

Ingredients:

Pho starter base (veggie, beef, or chicken)

Tofu (and olive oil or butter for frying, plus any seasonings)

Rice noodles

Cilantro

Green onions

Bean sprouts

Basil

Jalapeno

Lime

Sriracha

Plum sauce (optional)

So. Yummy.

Chop your veggies. Slice jalapeno and lime, chop some green onions, and pick fresh basil leaves and grab a big handful of sprouts. 

Fry the tofu. I always use olive oil, but I know butter tastes better. Use whatever you like. Or just boil it and don't fry it at all, or do a dry fry with no oil or butter (just keep an eye on it). I like to put a bunch of seasonings on my tofu: chili peppers, black pepper, some garlic salt, and a good amount of sesame seeds.

Cook the rice noodles! Follow whatever the package says, but it's just like cooking any other noodle. Also, simmer the broth in a big pot until nice and hot. You might also want to add the tofu into the broth so it can soak up the flavor (and stay warm), and add in a few more spices if you go the veggie route.

Scoop some rice noodles into a big ol' soup bowl. I did not have the kind of bowls you get at pho restaurants, and I plan on remedying this soon. Add the green onions and cilantro.

Pour the broth and the tofu over the noodles. Let it steep in. Top with the rest of the ingredients!

Shrimp pho is also really good. And I'm sure the beef and other cow parts are delicious as well. But I really dig the tofu.

Total Cost: ~$15 (less if you already have some of the toppings)

Total Time: ~30 minutes (assuming you don't spend 12 hours simmering a beef bone)

Note: In this particular post the photos are partially courtesy of my phone, which, while awesome and pretty decent at playing camera, is no match for Rich's actual camera. So if some of the pics look like cell phone pics, it's 'cause they are.

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