Homemade Peanut Butter Cups

This basic recipe comes from a blog that I absolutely love following, Macheesmo. I tweaked the recipe some, using homemade peanut butter rather than store bought. Wanna know something else cool? I got that recipe from Macheesmo too!! Since I am still tweaking my version I am going to just give you the links to the Macheesmo postings.

*Homemade Peanut Butter Cup Recipe: http://www.macheesmo.com/2009/07/homemade-peanut-butter-cups/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Macheesmo+%28Macheesmo%29

*Homemade Peanut Butter: http://www.macheesmo.com/2010/04/small-batch-peanut-butter/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Macheesmo+%28Macheesmo%29

BUT, I did take photos!! So, here we go .... Peanuts in the food processor. Check it out, chopped up peanuts!!! Ice cream topping anyone?

Semi-sweet chocolate chips and dark chocolate chips along with some butter, melting in a double boiler.

While the chips melted, the peanuts kept blending, I added honey, some vanilla sugar, and some homebrewed Chocolate Stout beer. Keep blending and voila ... peanut butter!

And now, we have melted chocolate too!

Tin foil cups in the muffin pans.

The tin foil cups now "filled" with the melted chocolate, just on the sides and a little bit on the bottom though.

After being popped into the freezer for a few minutes here they are with the chocolate hardened.

Filling them with the peanut butter. Roughly a tablespoon worth.

Beginning to cover the peanut butter with more chocolate. You want to make sure to get the peanut butter covered without making the chocolate on top too thick.

After a few minutes back in the freezer, here is one of the cups, ready for eating.

Ok, well NOW it is ready for eating. The foil was really easy to peel off.

Cut open in half so you can see it a little better. Very yummy.

I still want to tweak this some. Maybe it's been a long day (we didn't start these till after 10pm) but the felt time consuming to make. I would like to make the chocolate easier to work with. However, they are good. And making your own peanut butter REALLY allows you to personalize it as much as you want. ... Cool ..

Egg & Cheese English Muffin - Take that McD's!

One of may favorite foodie blogs posted this recipe not too long ago: http://www.macheesmo.com/2010/03/breakfast-sandwiches/ ~ I was intruiged and HAD to try it out.
Let me tell you .. Mickie D's is crap. Real Food rocks. And if you think it takes too long you're thinking wrong. That's just the facts folks. Here's our stab at Egg McMuffins.

~The eggs, fresh out of the oven, tops still poofy~

This recipe is insanely simple, hardly worthy of writing down recipe style. But here it goes anyway.

Egg McMuffins:

4 - 5 eggs
Splash of milk & melted butter

*Scramble these together in your bowl & then carefully pour them into a greased muffin tray*

Package of English Muffins. ~ Be healthy, use whole wheat or whole grain. Remember - the white the bread, the sooner you'll be dead.

*Turn on your oven to 350. You'll want to cook your eggs for 15 - 20 mins. You can also go ahead and slice the muffins, spread them out on a cookie sheet & toast them in the oven with the eggs. The muffins will only need about 10 minutes in the oven, so get your eggs in there first, then slice the muffins, and you should be good time wise.*

~Out of the oven, on the muffin, just needing some cheese~

*Putting it all together is pretty straightforward. Top it with some cheese. We have taken to adding some mustard on the muffin, but do what you wish here.*

Nick's photos are great, so I definitely recommend you check out his recipe for this. He will also give you enough info on WHY you should make these.
We did make a change to his recipe though - we scrambled the eggs. It's an extra step but one we preferred. The first batch, made following his recipe & just cracking the eggs into the muffin pan resulted in bites of pure egg white or pure yolk. And it seemed to make the whole thing hit heavy on your stomach. Feel free to find the way that is right for you though. We also used slices of cheese on ours rather than shredded - no reason there, just seemed easier for us.

I make these 6 at a time, which is really easy since there are 6 English Muffins in a package. Justin has taken them to work the next day for breakfast .. which is the ONLY time I've known Justin to actually eat something for breakfast at work. That should tell ya something. These bad boys are GOOD.
If you want them for your work week, make them up over the weekend. Wrap & freeze. Take to work & reheat. If you have a toaster you can heat them up in there, if not you can zap 'em in the microwave, they just will be a little chewier. But you'll have a homemade breakfast that you can eat at your desk. You'll have the pride of knowing you didn't succumb to spending money at McDonald's. If you're eating local eggs, you'll know you're supporting local chickens (thank you!). Add all those up and you have a tasty-good way to start your day.

Camping & Cooking ~ Bacon Hash

For a lot of people, cooking while you're camping in the woods is a no-brainer but, for a lot of other people it seems you're limited to hotdogs, chips, and soda. Not necessarily bad things when you're camping, but not really GOOD things either.
I didn't grow up camping, and to my knowledge, never tent camped till I was in high-school or college (probably the latter). You can imagine my cooking skills DEFINITELY fell into the latter of the two sets mentioned above. So, here is my attempt to, very honestly, share some "Cooking While Camping" knowledge.
This is, hopefully, the start of a new special segment here. For this, I'm going to assume you're camping like we do. We usually camp fairly near our car, though without electricity or water hook-ups. We go to tent-camping sites, usually in local National Forests (we love Arcadia in VA). We're able to bring coolers and therefore prepare some things ahead of time. We ALWAYS strive to be as eco-minded as possible when camping, leaving the site the same or better than we we found it!!! You won't find paper plates here!
Now that we've got that cleared up, down to cooking. Let's start with the morning, because it is a good place to start. I found this recipe thanks to the ever-wise & inspiring Nick from Macheesmo. Here is the link for cooking this in the kitchen: http://www.macheesmo.com/2009/06/bacon-hash/?3c89ce38. This recipe was a perfect one for camping since Nick describes it as "There are some meals that were made to be eaten after a night out. This is most definitely one of them." I take Nick's word on things, and we definitely were going to be drinking the night before we would eat this.

BACON HASH

For the recipe itself, I'm going to advise you to check out Nick's (see above link). Honestly, I forgot to take "prep photos" but his really kick-ass, so do yourself a BIG OLE favor and check it out.
We began prepping the ingredients Tuesday night. We cut up several small potatoes and let them sit in a bowl of water in the fridge over night. Wednesday (the day before we left for camping), I zapped them in the microwave (still in the water) for a couple minutes before draining them. Then I quickly chopped up the bacon, onions, and garlic to mix in with the potatoes. I poured a little roasted garlic olive oil over it all, to ensure cooking, and wrapped the whole shebang tightly in aluminum foil, labeled it, and tossed it into the freezer.

Some things I've found: 1)Cooking in foil is VERY convenient when camping, resulting in easy cooking and clean-up. 2)If you freeze your foil pack well enough, it will "hold it's shape" in your cooler as well as keep other items cool in there.


Here is the foil-pack of Bacon Hash, put on a small grill over the fire first thing Friday morning.


Here it is, flipped once and still cooking. It will hiss and sizzle and you will be sure you've burned it. You may blacken the edges, but fear not. Always flip your food if you can when cooking in a foil pack, and never assume it's cooked just because it sounds like it is boiling or sizzling.


Off the fire and opened up. You can see where the edges did get blackened a little, but that was the utterly delicious crispy parts. This is SO much better than Pop-Tarts in the morning!!!


The finished result. Justin had already eaten half his bowl by the time I could take this photo.

As you can see in the photo, we use some old enamel-ware bowls that were once my grandmother's, and we also bring our own utensils. It makes camping more pleasureable and clean-up really isn't that much more of a hassle. This dish came out wonderfully! The bacon didn't get dark and crispy like it would cooked in a skillet (which IS an option when camping!), but it was still yummy. It definitely hit the spot for first thing in the morning and made us very, very happy. Even if you aren't drinking the night before, this is still a yummy breakfast when camping.

Clean-Up:
1) Either put the aluminum foil in the trash, or save it for recycling when you get home. We often have two "trash" containers just for this purpose.
2) Fill up an old two-liter bottle (or something of the like) with water and a good squirt of eco-friendly dish detergent. If you want, fill up a second with just water.
3) Bring a good wash-rag from home. Put a little soapy water on it, and use it to clean off your plates, bowls, and utensils. If you brought clean water, feel free to rinse and repeat, but honestly, we skipped that the last couple of times with no ill side-effects.
4) Put your dishes away. We bring a "kitchen box" along, stocked with plates, bowls, utensils, etc. After we're done, they go back in there. If we're near the car we keep them in the car to keep any bugs out. This may evolve over time.